Coup de foudre

Ingenium studiumque tibi moresque genusque sunt equitis, fateor: cetera plebis habes. Bis septena tibi non sint subsellia tanti, ut sedeas viso pallidus Oceano. The wit, and the taste, and the manners, And the birth that fit a knight are yours, I grant: The rest is plebeian. A place in the fourteen rows Should not seem to you worth having If you have to turn pale in your seat At the sight of Oceanus.

Martial, Epigrams, Book 5, XXVII
English translation by Walter C. A. Ker

Michael Heizer, Levitated Mass, 2012. Photo courtesy of Frederic J. Brown/AFP/GettyImages.