“Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare,
And beauty draws us with a single hair.”

— Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock

Canto II, line 27. Compare: "No cord nor cable can so forcibly draw, or hold so fast, as love can do with a twined thread", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part iii, Section 2, Membrane 1, Subsection 2.
The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1714 and 1717)

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Alexander Pope158

eighteenth century English poet 1688–1744

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