what_the_classics_know_of_blue.txt

"Then we shall see," Stepan Arkadyevitch said to himself, and getting up
he put on a gray dressing-gown lined with blue silk, tied the tassels in
a knot, and, drawing a deep breath of air into his broad, bare chest, he
walked to the window with his usual confident step, turning out his feet
that carried his full frame so easily.

"I remember, and I
know that blue haze like the mist on the mountains in Switzerland.

But even as he was, he was charming, with his fair curls, his blue
eyes, and his plump, graceful little legs in tightly pulled-up
stockings.

When now her glance met his
blue kindly eyes looking intently at her, it seemed to her that he saw
right through her, and understood all that was not good that was passing
within her.

Stepan Arkadyevitch’s figure again went behind the bush, and Levin saw
nothing but the bright flash of a match, followed by the red glow and
blue smoke of a cigarette.

Levin looked about him to right and to left, and there, just facing him
against the dusky blue sky above the confused mass of tender shoots of
the aspens, he saw the flying bird.

Venus had risen above the branch, and the ear of the Great Bear
with its shaft was now all plainly visible against the dark blue sky,
yet still he waited.

He was dressed in a long-skirted blue coat, with buttons below the
waist at the back, and wore high boots wrinkled over the ankles and
straight over the calf, with big galoshes drawn over them. He rubbed his
face with his handkerchief, and wrapping round him his coat, which sat
extremely well as it was, he greeted them with a smile, holding out his
hand to Stepan Arkadyevitch, as though he wanted to catch something.

Going towards the stable, he met
the white-legged chestnut, Mahotin’s Gladiator, being led to the
race-course in a blue forage horsecloth, with what looked like huge ears
edged with blue.

Then she recalled
the thin, terribly thin figure of Petrov, with his long neck, in his
brown coat, his scant, curly hair, his questioning blue eyes that were
so terrible to Kitty at first, and his painful attempts to seem hearty
and lively in her presence.

"Oh, here’s Madame Stahl," said Kitty, indicating an invalid carriage,
where, propped on pillows, something in gray and blue was lying under a
sunshade.

The sky had grown
blue and bright; and with the same softness, but with the same
remoteness, it met his questioning gaze.

Her name, written
in blue pencil, "Anna," was the first thing that caught his eye.

Betsy, dressed in the
height of the latest fashion, in a hat that towered somewhere over her
head like a shade on a lamp, in a blue dress with violet crossway
stripes slanting one way on the bodice and the other way on the skirt,
was sitting beside Anna, her tall flat figure held erect.

When the princess came to them, they were sitting side by side on
the chest, sorting the dresses and disputing over Kitty’s wanting to
give Dunyasha the brown dress she had been wearing when Levin proposed
to her, while he insisted that that dress must never be given away, but
Dunyasha must have the blue one.

The other, a little
younger, was lying in the grass leaning on his elbows, with his tangled,
flaxen head in his hands, staring at the water with his dreamy blue
eyes.

That bill on
blue paper, for a hat and ribbons, he could not recall without a rush of
self-pity.

Was it not youth to feel
as he felt now, when coming from the other side to the edge of the wood
he saw in the glowing light of the slanting sunbeams the gracious figure
of Varenka in her yellow gown with her basket, walking lightly by the
trunk of an old birch tree, and when this impression of the sight of
Varenka blended so harmoniously with the beauty of the view, of the
yellow oatfield lying bathed in the slanting sunshine, and beyond it the
distant ancient forest flecked with yellow and melting into the blue of
the distance?

The blue of the grass had changed to
yellow-green.

Lvov, in a house coat with a belt and in chamois leather shoes, was
sitting in an armchair, and with a pince-nez with blue glasses he was
reading a book that stood on a reading desk, while in his beautiful hand
he held a half-burned cigarette daintily away from him.

His handsome, delicate, and still youthful-looking face, to which his
curly, glistening silvery hair gave a still more aristocratic air,
lighted up with a smile when he saw Levin.

Anna had come from behind the treillage to meet him, and Levin
saw in the dim light of the study the very woman of the portrait, in a
dark blue shot gown, not in the same position nor with the same
expression, but with the same perfection of beauty which the artist had
caught in the portrait.

Carefully set to rights, with hair well-brushed, in a smart little cap
with some blue in it, her arms out on the quilt, she was lying on her
back.

said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling, as
he looked at the handsome, broad-shouldered lad in blue coat and long
trousers, who walked in alertly and confidently.

Where are his blue eyes, his sweet,
shy smile?"

Thinking of Alexey Alexandrovitch, she at once
pictured him with extraordinary vividness as though he were alive before
her, with his mild, lifeless, dull eyes, the blue veins in his white
hands, his intonations and the cracking of his fingers, and remembering
the feeling which had existed between them, and which was also called
love, she shuddered with loathing.

Just as she was talking to the porter, the coachman Mihail, red and
cheerful in his smart blue coat and chain, evidently proud of having so
successfully performed his commission, came up to her and gave her a
letter.

But, however I screw up my eyes and strain my sight, I cannot see it not
round and not bounded, and in spite of my knowing about infinite space,
I am incontestably right when I see a solid blue dome, and more right
than when I strain my eyes to see beyond it."

They will not care a rush
whether his coat is long or short,--whether the color be purple, or blue
and buff.

The youngest, whom my father loved,
    Because our mother's brow was given
    To him, with eyes as blue as heaven--
      For him my soul was sorely moved:
    And truly might it be distressed
    To see such bird in such a nest;[9]
    For he was beautiful as day--
      (When day was beautiful to me                                    80
      As to young eagles, being free)--
      A polar day, which will not see[10]
    A sunset till its summer's gone,
      Its sleepless summer of long light,
    The snow-clad offspring of the sun:
      And thus he was as pure and bright,
    And in his natural spirit gay,
    With tears for nought but others' ills,
    And then they flowed like mountain rills,
    Unless he could assuage the woe                                    90
    Which he abhorred to view below.

the while
    Which made me both to weep and smile--
    I sometimes deemed that it might be
    My brother's soul come down to me;[24]
    But then at last away it flew,
    And then 'twas mortal well I knew,                                 290
    For he would never thus have flown--
    And left me twice so doubly lone,--
    Lone--as the corse within its shroud,
    Lone--as a solitary cloud,[25]
      A single cloud on a sunny day,
    While all the rest of heaven is clear,
    A frown upon the atmosphere,
    That hath no business to appear[26]
      When skies are blue, and earth is gay.

I saw them--and they were the same,
    They were not changed like me in frame;
    I saw their thousand years of snow
    On high--their wide long lake below,[g]
    And the blue Rhone in fullest flow;[29]
    I heard the torrents leap and gush
    O'er channelled rock and broken bush;
    I saw the white-walled distant town,[30]
    And whiter sails go skimming down;                                 340
    And then there was a little isle,[31]
    Which in my very face did smile,
      The only one in view;
    A small green isle, it seemed no more,[32]
    Scarce broader than my dungeon floor,
    But in it there were three tall trees,
    And o'er it blew the mountain breeze,
    And by it there were waters flowing,
    And on it there were young flowers growing,
      Of gentle breath and hue.

During the afternoon the hall assumes a much
deeper and warmer colouring, and the blue transparency of the morning
disappears; but at eventide, after the sun has set behind the Jura, the
scene changes to the deep glow of fire ..."--_Guide to the Castle of
Chillon_, by A.

The Rhone is blue below the lake at Geneva, but "les embouchures" at
Villeneuve are muddy and discoloured.]

[30] [Villeneuve.]

[31] Between the entrances of the Rhone and Villeneuve, not far from
Chillon, is a very small island [Ile de Paix]; the only one I could
perceive in my voyage round and over the lake, within its circumference.

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
    The Boy was sprung to manhood: in the wilds
    Of fiery climes he made himself a home,
    And his Soul drank their sunbeams: he was girt
    With strange and dusky aspects; he was not
    Himself like what he had been; on the sea                          110
    And on the shore he was a wanderer;
    There was a mass of many images
    Crowded like waves upon me, but he was
    A part of all; and in the last he lay
    Reposing from the noontide sultriness,
    Couched among fallen columns, in the shade
    Of ruined walls that had survived the names
    Of those who reared them; by his sleeping side
    Stood camels grazing, and some goodly steeds
    Were fastened near a fountain; and a man                           120
    Clad in a flowing garb did watch the while,
    While many of his tribe slumbered around:
    And they were canopied by the blue sky,
    So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful,
    That God alone was to be seen in Heaven.[47]

                        V.

The well-known lines in Tennyson's _Locksley Hall_--

    "Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew
    From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue!"

stanza lvii.]

[ah] _And think of such things with a childish eye._--[MS.]

[89] {61}[Compare--

    "He who first met the Highland's swelling blue,
    Will love each peak, that shows a kindred hue,
    Hail in each crag a friend's familiar face,
    And clasp the mountain in his mind's embrace."

In the blue depth of the waters,
      Where the wave hath no strife,
    Where the Wind is a stranger,
      And the Sea-snake hath life,
    Where the Mermaid is decking                                        80
      Her green hair with shells,
    Like the storm on the surface
      Came the sound of thy spells;
    O'er my calm Hall of Coral
      The deep Echo rolled--
    To the Spirit of Ocean
      Thy wishes unfold!

I do remember me, that in my youth,
    When I was wandering,--upon such a night
    I stood within the Coliseum's wall,[166]                            10
    'Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome;
    The trees which grew along the broken arches
    Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars
    Shone through the rents of ruin; from afar
    The watch-dog bayed beyond the Tiber; and
    More near from out the Cæsars' palace came
    The owl's long cry, and, interruptedly,[167]
    Of distant sentinels the fitful song
    Begun and died upon the gentle wind.[168]
    Some cypresses beyond the time-worn breach                          20
    Appeared to skirt the horizon, yet they stood
    Within a bowshot.

forehead remarkably good" (see lines 208-220); not
Theresa Guiccioli, who was a "blonde," with a "brilliant complexion and
blue eyes."

whose ever golden fields,                            50
      Ploughed by the sunbeams solely, would suffice
    For the world's granary; thou, whose sky Heaven gilds[ca]
      With brighter stars, and robes with deeper blue;
      Thou, in whose pleasant places Summer builds
    Her palace, in whose cradle Empire grew,
      And formed the Eternal City's ornaments
      From spoils of Kings whom freemen overthrew;
    Birthplace of heroes, sanctuary of Saints,
      Where earthly first, then heavenly glory made[cb]
      Her home; thou, all which fondest Fancy paints,                   60
    And finds her prior vision but portrayed
      In feeble colours, when the eye--from the Alp
      Of horrid snow, and rock, and shaggy shade
    Of desert-loving pine, whose emerald scalp
      Nods to the storm--dilates and dotes o'er thee,
      And wistfully implores, as 'twere, for help
    To see thy sunny fields, my Italy,
      Nearer and nearer yet, and dearer still
      The more approached, and dearest were they free,
    Thou--Thou must wither to each tyrant's will:                       70
      The Goth hath been,--the German, Frank, and Hun[297]
      Are yet to come,--and on the imperial hill
    Ruin, already proud of the deeds done
      By the old barbarians, there awaits the new,
      Throned on the Palatine, while lost and won
    Rome at her feet lies bleeding; and the hue
      Of human sacrifice and Roman slaughter
      Troubles the clotted air, of late so blue,
    And deepens into red the saffron water
      Of Tiber, thick with dead; the helpless priest,                   80
      And still more helpless nor less holy daughter,
    Vowed to their God, have shrieking fled, and ceased
      Their ministry: the nations take their prey,
      Iberian, Almain, Lombard, and the beast
    And bird, wolf, vulture, more humane than they
      Are; these but gorge the flesh, and lap the gore
      Of the departed, and then go their way;
    But those, the human savages, explore
      All paths of torture, and insatiate yet,
      With Ugolino hunger prowl for more.

I have fought and bled; commanded, aye, and conquered;             430
    Have made and marred peace oft in embassies,
    As it might chance to be our country's 'vantage;
    Have traversed land and sea in constant duty,
    Through almost sixty years, and still for Venice,
    My fathers' and my birthplace, whose dear spires,
    Rising at distance o'er the blue Lagoon,
    It was reward enough for me to view
    Once more; but not for any knot of men,
    Nor sect, nor faction, did I bleed or sweat!

Around me are the stars and waters--
    Worlds mirrored in the Ocean, goodlier sight[ee]
    Than torches glared back by a gaudy glass;                          70
    And the great Element, which is to space
    What Ocean is to Earth, spreads its blue depths,
    Softened with the first breathings of the spring;
    The high Moon sails upon her beauteous way,
    Serenely smoothing o'er the lofty walls
    Of those tall piles and sea-girt palaces,[ef]
    Whose porphyry pillars, and whose costly fronts,
    Fraught with the Orient spoil of many marbles,
    Like altars ranged along the broad canal,
    Seem each a trophy of some mighty deed                              80
    Reared up from out the waters, scarce less strangely
    Than those more massy and mysterious giants
    Of architecture, those Titanian fabrics,
    Which point in Egypt's plains to times that have
    No other record.

And you, ye blue sea waves!

Ye blue waves!

The Angels all were singing out of tune,
      And hoarse with having little else to do,
    Excepting to wind up the sun and moon,
      Or curb a runaway young star or two,[fz]
    Or wild colt of a comet, which too soon
      Broke out of bounds o'er the ethereal blue,
    Splitting some planet with its playful tail,
    As boats are sometimes by a wanton whale.

When Michael saw this host, he first grew pale,
      As Angels can; next, like Italian twilight,
    He turned all colours--as a peacock's tail,
      Or sunset streaming through a Gothic skylight
    In some old abbey, or a trout not stale,
      Or distant lightning on the horizon by night,
    Or a fresh rainbow, or a grand review
    Of thirty regiments in red, green, and blue.

This was enclosed in a leaden
coffin, again enclosed in another mahogany coffin, and the whole finally
placed in the state coffin of Spanish mahogany, covered with the richest
Genoa velvet of royal purple, a few shades deeper in tint than Garter
blue.

The wave that bears my tears returns no more:
      Will she return by whom that wave shall sweep?--
    Both tread thy banks, both wander on thy shore,
      I by thy source, she by the dark-blue deep.[ic]


                        10.

Will thy yard of blue riband, poor Fingal, recall
      The fetters from millions of Catholic limbs?

Again on December 1, "To-morrow
there is a party _purple_ at the 'blue' Miss Berry's.

um!--I
don't much affect your blue-bottles;--but one ought to be civil....

Perhaps that blue-winged Kashmirian butterfly of book-learning Lady
Charlemont will be there" (see _Letters_, 1898, ii.

If he did not affect "your
blue-bottles," he was on intimate terms with Madame de Staël, "the
_Begum_ of Literature," as Moore called her; with the Contessa
d'Albrizzi (the De Staël of Italy); with Mrs. Wilmot, the inspirer of
"She walks in beauty like the night;" with Mrs. Shelley; with Lady
Blessington.

Moreover, to say nothing of his "mathematical wife," who
was as "blue as ether," the Countess Guiccioli could not only read and
"inwardly digest" _Corinna_ (see letter to Moore, January 2, 1820), but
knew the _Divina Commedia_ by heart, and was a critic as well as an
inspirer of her lover's poetry.

The Blue!

I say she's a Blue, man, as blue as the ether.

Why,
    Do you think me subdued by a Blue-stocking's eye,
    So far as to tremble to tell her in rhyme
    What I've told her in prose, at the least, as sublime?

Very true; let us go, then, before they can come,
    Or else we'll be kept here an hour at their levee,
    On the rack of cross questions, by all the blue bevy.

But the thing of all things which distresses me more
    Than the bills of the week (though they trouble me sore)
    Is the numerous, humorous, backbiting crew
    Of scribblers, wits, lecturers, white, black, and blue,
    Who are brought to my house as an inn, to my cost--
    For the bill here, it seems, is defrayed by the host--
    No pleasure!

[_Exeunt._


FOOTNOTES:

[609] {573}[Benjamin Stillingfleet is said to have attended evening
parties at Mrs. Montague's in grey or blue worsted stockings, in lieu of
full dress.

The ladies who excused and tolerated this defiance of the
conventions were nicknamed "blues," or "blue-stockings."

A farce by
Moore, entitled _The M. P., or The Blue-Stocking_, was played for the
first time at the Lyceum, September 30, 1811.

The heroine, "Lady Bab
Blue, is a pretender to poetry, chemistry, etc."--Genest's _Hist. of the
Stage_, 1832, viii.

_Pros._ This blue-eyed hag was hither brought with child,
And here was left by the sailors.

75

    _Enter CERES._

  _Cer._ Hail, many-colour’d messenger, that ne’er
    Dost disobey the wife of Jupiter;
    Who, with thy saffron wings, upon my flowers
    Diffusest honey-drops, refreshing showers;
    And with each end of thy blue bow dost crown                    80
    My bosky acres and my unshrubb’d down,
    Rich scarf to my proud earth;--why hath thy queen
    Summon’d me hither, to this short-grass’d green?

Nevertheless he submitted to be kissed willingly enough, though Maggie
hung on his neck in rather a strangling fashion, while his blue-gray
eyes wandered toward the croft and the lambs and the river, where he
promised himself that he would begin to fish the first thing to-morrow
morning.

The wood I walk in on this mild May day, with the young yellow-brown
foliage of the oaks between me and the blue sky, the white
star-flowers and the blue-eyed speedwell and the ground ivy at my
feet, what grove of tropic palms, what strange ferns or splendid
broad-petalled blossoms, could ever thrill such deep and delicate
fibres within me as this home scene?

Funerals were always conducted with peculiar propriety in the
Dodson family: the hat-bands were never of a blue shade, the gloves
never split at the thumb, everybody was a mourner who ought to be, and
there were always scarfs for the bearers.

"I know the chap as owns the ferrets," said Bob, in a hoarse treble
voice, as he shuffled along, keeping his blue eyes fixed on the river,
like an amphibious animal who foresaw occasion for darting in.

"My new blue coat as I've got on?"

and Tom's cheeks were looking particularly
brilliant as a relief to his best blue suit, which he wore with
becoming calmness, having, after a little wrangling, effected what was
always the one point of interest to him in his toilet: he had
transferred all the contents of his every-day pockets to those
actually in wear.

Tom took no notice of her, but took, instead, two or three hard peas
out of his pocket, and shot them with his thumbnail against the
window, vaguely at first, but presently with the distinct aim of
hitting a superannuated blue-bottle which was exposing its imbecility
in the spring sunshine, clearly against the views of Nature, who had
provided Tom and the peas for the speedy destruction of this weak
individual.

"Yes, Sophy," said Mrs. Tulliver, "I remember our having a blue ground
with a white spot both alike,--I've got a bit in a bed-quilt now; and
if you would but go and see sister Glegg, and persuade her to make it
up with Tulliver, I should take it very kind of you.

But the fact was
so, for at the next bend in the lane Maggie actually saw the little
semicircular black tent with the blue smoke rising before it, which
was to be her refuge from all the blighting obloquy that had pursued
her in civilized life.

The plum-pudding was of the same handsome roundness as
ever, and came in with the symbolic blue flames around it, as if it
had been heroically snatched from the nether fires, into which it had
been thrown by dyspeptic Puritans; the dessert was as splendid as
ever, with its golden oranges, brown nuts, and the crystalline light
and dark of apple-jelly and damson cheese; in all these things
Christmas was as it had always been since Tom could remember; it was
only distinguished, if by anything, by superior sliding and snowballs.

Dissatisfied with the pacific aspect of a
face which had no more than the faintest hint of flaxen eyebrow,
together with a pair of amiable blue-gray eyes and round pink cheeks
that refused to look formidable, let him frown as he would before the
looking-glass (Philip had once told him of a man who had a horseshoe
frown, and Tom had tried with all his frowning might to make a
horseshoe on his forehead), he had had recourse to that unfailing
source of the terrible, burnt cork, and had made himself a pair of
black eyebrows that met in a satisfactory manner over his nose, and
were matched by a less carefully adjusted blackness about the chin.

Tom looked up with that momentary stopping of the breath which comes
with a sudden joy; then he gave a long sigh, and turned his blue-gray
eyes straight on Philip's face, as he had not done for a fortnight or
more.

She put out one arm toward Tom, looking up at him piteously with her
helpless, childish blue eyes.

The person who
wanted him was in the kitchen, and in the first moments, by the
imperfect fire and candle light, Tom had not even an indefinite sense
of any acquaintance with the rather broad-set but active figure,
perhaps two years older than himself, that looked at him with a pair
of blue eyes set in a disc of freckles, and pulled some curly red
locks with a strong intention of respect.

An' I'n changed one o' the
suvreigns to buy my mother a goose for dinner, an' I'n bought a blue
plush wescoat, an' a sealskin cap,--for if I meant to be a packman,
I'd do it respectable.

He had married a Miss Clint,
and at the time Mrs. Tulliver had heard of that marriage, the summer
when she wore her blue satin spencer, and had not yet any thoughts of
Mr. Tulliver, she knew no harm of Wakem. And certainly toward herself,
whom he knew to have been a Miss Dodson, it was out of all possibility
that he could entertain anything but good-will, when it was once
brought home to his observation that she, for her part, had never
wanted to go to law, and indeed was at present disposed to take Mr.
Wakem's view of all subjects rather than her husband's.

The successful Yellow candidate for the borough of
Old Topping, perhaps, feels no pursuant meditative hatred toward the
Blue editor who consoles his subscribers with vituperative rhetoric
against Yellow men who sell their country, and are the demons of
private life; but he might not be sorry, if law and opportunity
favored, to kick that Blue editor to a deeper shade of his favorite
color.

It was not Tom who was entering, but a man in
a sealskin cap and a blue plush waistcoat, carrying a pack on his
back, and followed closely by a bullterrier of brindled coat and
defiant aspect.

Maggie, thus exalted into Bob's exalting Madonna, laughed in spite of
herself; at which her worshipper's blue eyes twinkled too, and under
these favoring auspices he touched his cap and walked away.

But now it had the charm for her which any broken
ground, any mimic rock and ravine, have for the eyes that rest
habitually on the level; especially in summer, when she could sit on a
grassy hollow under the shadow of a branching ash, stooping aslant
from the steep above her, and listen to the hum of insects, like
tiniest bells on the garment of Silence, or see the sunlight piercing
the distant boughs, as if to chase and drive home the truant heavenly
blue of the wild hyacinths.

But you must wear pink, my dear; that blue
thing as your aunt Glegg gave you turns you into a crowflower.

There is a very pleasant light in
Tom's blue-gray eyes as he glances at the house-windows; that fold in
his brow never disappears, but it is not unbecoming; it seems to imply
a strength of will that may possibly be without harshness, when the
eyes and mouth have their gentlest expression.

I think with a
shudder that her daughter will always be present in person, and have
no agreeable proxies of that kind,--a fat, blond girl, with round blue
eyes, who will stare at us silently."

"She said you had light hair
and blue eyes."

But she presently came back walking with new courage a little way
behind her husband, who showed the brilliancy of his blue eyes and
regular white teeth in the doorway, bowing respectfully.

I
don't say what more I shall do; but _that_ I shall do, and if I should
die to-morrow, Mr. Pullet, you'll bear it in mind,--though you'll be
blundering with the keys, and never remember as that on the third
shelf o' the left-hand wardrobe, behind the night-caps with the broad
ties,--not the narrow-frilled uns,--is the key of the drawer in the
Blue Room, where the key o' the Blue Closet is.

But at last a mist gathered over the blue-gray eyes,
and the lips found a word they could utter,--the old childish
"Magsie!"

I own my first sensations, as soon as I was left solitary and alone in my
own chamber in the hotel, were far from being so flattering as I had
prefigured them.  I walked up gravely to the window in my dusty black
coat, and looking through the glass saw all the world in yellow, blue,
and green, running at the ring of pleasure.—The old with broken lances,
and in helmets which had lost their vizards;—the young in armour bright
which shone like gold, beplumed with each gay feather of the
east,—all,—all, tilting at it like fascinated knights in tournaments of
yore for fame and love.—

Alas, poor Yorick!

He had purchased, moreover, a handsome blue satin waistcoat, fancifully
enough embroidered:—this was indeed something the worse for the service
it had done, but ’twas clean scour’d;—the gold had been touch’d up, and
upon the whole was rather showy than otherwise;—and as the blue was not
violent, it suited with the coat and breeches very well: he had squeez’d
out of the money, moreover, a new bag and a solitaire; and had insisted
with the _fripier_ upon a gold pair of garters to his breeches knees.—He
had purchased muslin ruffles, _bien brodées_, with four livres of his own
money;—and a pair of white silk stockings for five more;—and to top all,
nature had given him a handsome figure, without costing him a sous.

Such as he is who has so near the ague
  Of quartan that his nails are blue already,
  And trembles all, but looking at the shade;

Even such became I at those proffered words;
  But shame in me his menaces produced,
  Which maketh servant strong before good master.

He met one of the gardeners, whom he promised to bring some of
the nobles to inspect a special kind of blue lily, in which the gardener
took great pride.

On the king's consent, he begged furthermore
that Oropastes, Croesus, and three other nobles should be allowed to
witness the opening of the blue lily in the hanging gardens.

Boges first related that he was with the Achæmenidæ, looking
at the blue lily, and called Kandaules to inquire if everything was in
order.

She opened her baby-blue eyes, and stared up with
astonishment and confusion.

The complete torpor came at last; the fingers lost their tension, the
arms unbent; then the little head fell away from the bosom, and the blue
eyes of the child opened wide on the cold starlight.

Presently the little golden head sank down, and the
blue eyes were veiled by their delicate half-transparent lids.

Was she a
fair, young, blue-eyed daughter of Eve?

Georges bent over her and gazed into her eyes of heavenly blue through
which her very soul was speaking.

Looking at him with her beautiful blue eyes, the girl replied.

It
     became the fashion of young men to dress themselves in blue
     coats and yellow breeches in imitation of the hero, and many
     of them were moved to follow Werther's example as the simplest
     way of settling their love affairs.

She has abundance of soul, which flashes from her deep
blue eyes.

We had no revolutions to fear, nor fatigues to undergo; all
our adventures were by the fireside, and all our migrations from the
blue bed to the brown.

If the sweetest blue eyes that ever beamed beneath a forehead of snowy
whiteness, over which dark brown and waving hair fell, less in curls
than masses of locky richness, could only have known what wild work they
were making of my poor heart, Miss Dashwood, I trust, would have looked
at her teacup or her muffin rather than at me, as she actually did, on
that fatal morning.

Matilda drew a circle around herself, and another
around him; bending low, she muttered a few indistinct sentences, and a
thin, blue, sulphurous flame arose from the ground.

I stayed at the Blue Posts, where all the midshipmen put up, that night,
and next morning presented myself at the George Inn with my letter of
introduction to Captain Savage.

The former, with his
indolent and listless blue eyes and flaxen hair, trembled and blinked,
his eyelids heavy with sleep, and crossed himself.

Two or three days after Maister Wiggie, the minister, had gone through
the ceremony of tying us together, my sign was nailed up, painted in
black letters on a blue ground, with a picture of a jacket on one side
and a pair of shears on the other; and I hung up a wheen ready-made
waistcoats, caps, and Kilmarnock cowls in the window.

Notwithstanding, we behaved ourselves like true-blue Scotsmen, called
forth to fight the battles of our country, and if the French had come,
as they did not come, they would have found that to their cost, as sure
as my name is Mansie.

Some instances of correlation
are quite whimsical; thus cats with blue eyes are invariably deaf;
colour and constitutional peculiarities go together, of which many
remarkable cases could be given amongst animals and plants.

The rock-pigeon is of a slaty-blue, and has a white rump
(the Indian sub-species, C.

Moreover, when two birds belonging
to two distinct breeds are crossed, neither of which is blue or has
any of the above-specified marks, the mongrel offspring are very apt
suddenly to acquire these characters; for instance, I crossed some
uniformly white fantails with some uniformly black barbs, and they
produced mottled brown and black birds; these I again crossed together,
and one grandchild of the pure white fantail and pure black barb was of
as beautiful a blue colour, with the white rump, double black wing-bar,
and barred and white-edged tail-feathers, as any wild rock-pigeon!

From these several reasons, namely, the improbability of man having
formerly got seven or eight supposed species of pigeons to breed freely
under domestication; these supposed species being quite unknown in a
wild state, and their becoming nowhere feral; these species having very
abnormal characters in certain respects, as compared with all other
Columbidae, though so like in most other respects to the rock-pigeon;
the blue colour and various marks occasionally appearing in all the
breeds, both when kept pure and when crossed; the mongrel offspring
being perfectly fertile;--from these several reasons, taken together, I
can feel no doubt that all our domestic breeds have descended from the
Columba livia with its geographical sub-species.

What can be more singular
than the relation between blue eyes and deafness in cats, and the
tortoise-shell colour with the female sex; the feathered feet and skin
between the outer toes in pigeons, and the presence of more or less down
on the young birds when first hatched, with the future colour of their
plumage; or, again, the relation between the hair and teeth in the naked
Turkish dog, though here probably homology comes into play?

If some species in a large genus of plants
had blue flowers and some had red, the colour would be only a specific
character, and no one would be surprised at one of the blue species
varying into red, or conversely; but if all the species had blue
flowers, the colour would become a generic character, and its variation
would be a more unusual circumstance.

With pigeons, however, we have another case, namely, the occasional
appearance in all the breeds, of slaty-blue birds with two black bars
on the wings, a white rump, a bar at the end of the tail, with the outer
feathers externally edged near their bases with white.

We may I think
confidently come to this conclusion, because, as we have seen, these
coloured marks are eminently liable to appear in the crossed offspring
of two distinct and differently coloured breeds; and in this case there
is nothing in the external conditions of life to cause the reappearance
of the slaty-blue, with the several marks, beyond the influence of the
mere act of crossing on the laws of inheritance.

For instance, it is probable that in each generation of the
barb-pigeon, which produces most rarely a blue and black-barred bird,
there has been a tendency in each generation in the plumage to assume
this colour.

As, however, we never know the exact character
of the common ancestor of a group, we could not distinguish these two
cases: if, for instance, we did not know that the rock-pigeon was not
feather-footed or turn-crowned, we could not have told, whether these
characters in our domestic breeds were reversions or only analogous
variations; but we might have inferred that the blueness was a case of
reversion, from the number of the markings, which are correlated with
the blue tint, and which it does not appear probable would all appear
together from simple variation.

More especially we might have inferred
this, from the blue colour and marks so often appearing when distinct
breeds of diverse colours are crossed.

When the
oldest and truest breeds of various colours are crossed, we see a
strong tendency for the blue tint and bars and marks to reappear in the
mongrels.

Moreover, as Gartner during several years
repeatedly crossed the primrose and cowslip, which we have such good
reason to believe to be varieties, and only once or twice succeeded in
getting fertile seed; as he found the common red and blue pimpernels
(Anagallis arvensis and coerulea), which the best botanists rank as
varieties, absolutely sterile together; and as he came to the same
conclusion in several other analogous cases; it seems to me that we
may well be permitted to doubt whether many other species are really so
sterile, when intercrossed, as Gartner believes.

For instance, the blue and red pimpernel, the primrose
and cowslip, which are considered by many of our best botanists as
varieties, are said by Gartner not to be quite fertile when crossed, and
he consequently ranks them as undoubted species.

Throughout an
enormously large proportion of the ocean, the bright blue tint of the
water bespeaks its purity.

How simply is
this fact explained if we believe that these species have descended from
a striped progenitor, in the same manner as the several domestic breeds
of pigeon have descended from the blue and barred rock-pigeon!

Cats:
   with blue eyes, deaf, 12.

reverting to blue colour, 160.

in pigeons to blue colour, 160.

Beneath the
wall of the house front there lies a channel, a fathom wide, paved with
cobble-stones, and beside it runs a graveled walk bordered by geraniums
and oleanders and pomegranates set in great blue and white glazed
earthenware pots.

A
collection of dim-ribbed glass decanters, metal discs with a satin sheen
on them, and piles of blue-edged earthenware plates of Touraine ware
cover the sticky surfaces of the sideboards that line the room. In a
corner stands a box containing a set of numbered pigeon-holes, in which
the lodgers' table napkins, more or less soiled and stained with wine,
are kept.

He might be seen any day sailing like
a gray shadow along the walks of the Jardin des Plantes, on his head a
shabby cap, a cane with an old yellow ivory handle in the tips of his
thin fingers; the outspread skirts of his threadbare overcoat failed
to conceal his meagre figure; his breeches hung loosely on his shrunken
limbs; the thin, blue-stockinged legs trembled like those of a drunken
man; there was a notable breach of continuity between the dingy white
waistcoat and crumpled shirt frills and the cravat twisted about a
throat like a turkey gobbler's; altogether, his appearance set people
wondering whether this outlandish ghost belonged to the audacious race
of the sons of Japhet who flutter about on the Boulevard Italien.

Eugene de Rastignac was a thoroughly southern type; he had a fair
complexion, blue eyes, black hair.

He usually wore a coat of
corn-flower blue; his rotund and portly person was still further set
off by a clean white waistcoat, and a gold chain and seals which dangled
over that broad expanse.

He had left off wearing the corn-flower blue
coat, and was sumptuously arrayed, summer as well as winter, in a coarse
chestnut-brown coat, a plush waistcoat, and doeskin breeches.

The keen, bright blue eyes had grown dull, and faded to a steel-gray
color; the red inflamed rims looked as though they had shed tears of
blood.

The driver, in a blue-and-red greatcoat,
dismounted and let down the step.

de Restaud's blue boudoir and Mme.

My youth
is still like a blue and cloudless sky.

I saw an enchanting form, a countenance full of graciousness, a dazzling
colour, blue eyes beaming kindness; you may imagine that my conversion
was from that moment decided.

The day of his first examination
arrived, and he presented a handsome appearance in his blue uniform with
brass buttons and lacquered boots.

The examination lasted ten days, and
Volodya, having passed brilliantly, returned on the last day no longer
in blue coat and grey cap, but in student uniform, with blue embroidered
collar, three-cornered hat, and a gilt dagger by his side.

We crossed the western branch of the Delaware, having laboured hard over
the mountains called the Blue Ridge, and pitched our tent near the banks
of the river.

Along the part of the road where there was
but little snow, were smooth sheets of ice of a blue-black hue, lying
between the snow and the bare field, and glittering in patches as far
as the eye could reach.

But grown-up she was, nevertheless, and after the dance was
ended, the dark-haired man pulled her down on his lap; she tore herself
away, but still she sat down beside him.

Oyvind's eyes turned to the man, who wore a fine blue broadcloth suit,
blue checked shirt, and a soft silk neckerchief; he had a small face,
vigorous blue eyes, a laughing, defiant mouth.

cried his comrade; but before he could say more,
Oyvind inquired,--

"Who is that in the blue broadcloth suit, dancing with Marit?"

"You are
number two," said he to a boy with blue eyes, who was gazing up at him
most beseechingly; and the boy danced out of the circle.

Then it was that the school-master, in a blue
broadcloth suit, frock coat, and knee-breeches, high shoes, stiff
cravat, and a pipe protruding from his back coat pocket, came down
towards them, nodded and smiled, tapped one on the shoulder, spoke a
few words to another about answering loudly and distinctly, and
meanwhile worked his way along to the poor-box, where Oyvind stood
answering all the questions of his friend Hans in reference to his
journey.

The others viewed him now more
composedly, and observed in what respect he had altered, in what he
remained unchanged; looked at what was entirely new about him, even to
the blue broadcloth suit he wore.

[Footnote 1: The hulder in the Norse folk-lore appears like a beautiful
woman, and usually wears a blue petticoat and a white sword; but she
unfortunately has a long tail, like a cow's, which she anxiously
strives to conceal when she is among people.

"Hold thy head up; within thee, too,
      Rises a mighty vault of blue,
      Wherein are harp tones sounding,
      Swinging, exulting, rebounding.

Song--Address To The Woodlark
     Song.--On Chloris Being Ill
     Song--How Cruel Are The Parents
     Song--Yonder Pomp Of Costly Fashion
     Song--'Twas Na Her Bonie Blue E'e
     Song--Their Groves O'Sweet Myrtle
     Song--Forlorn, My Love, No Comfort Near
     Song--Fragment,--Why, Why Tell The Lover
     Song--The Braw Wooer
     Song--This Is No My Ain Lassie
     Song--O Bonie Was Yon Rosy Brier
     Song--Song Inscribed To Alexander Cunningham
     Song--O That's The Lassie O' My Heart

     Inscription to Chloris
     Song--Fragment.--The Wren's Nest
     Song--News, Lassies, News
     Song--Crowdie Ever Mair
     Song--Mally's Meek, Mally's Sweet
     Song--Jockey's Taen The Parting Kiss
     Verses To Collector Mitchell

     1796

     The Dean Of Faculty
     Epistle To Colonel De Peyster
     Song--A Lass Wi' A Tocher
     Song--The Trogger.

And by thy een sae bonie blue,
     I swear I'm thine for ever, O!

The sky was blue, the wind was still,
     The moon was shining clearly;
     I set her down, wi' right good will,
     Amang the rigs o' barley:
     I ken't her heart was a' my ain;
     I lov'd her most sincerely;

     I kiss'd her owre and owre again,
     Amang the rigs o' barley.

But, Peggy dear, the ev'ning's clear,
     Thick flies the skimming swallow,
     The sky is blue, the fields in view,
     All fading-green and yellow:
     Come let us stray our gladsome way,
     And view the charms of Nature;
     The rustling corn, the fruited thorn,
     And ev'ry happy creature.

Think, wicked Sinner, wha ye're skaithing:
     It's just the Blue-gown badge an' claithing
     O' saunts; tak that, ye lea'e them naething
     To ken them by
     Frae ony unregenerate heathen,
     Like you or I.

But Merran sat behint their backs,
     Her thoughts on Andrew Bell:
     She lea'es them gashin at their cracks,
     An' slips out--by hersel';
     She thro' the yard the nearest taks,
     An' for the kiln she goes then,
     An' darklins grapit for the bauks,
     And in the blue-clue^9 throws then,
     Right fear't that night.

[Footnote 9: Whoever would, with success, try this spell,
     must strictly observe these directions: Steal out, all
     alone, to the kiln, and darkling, throw into the "pot" a
     clue of blue yarn; wind it in a new clue off the old one;
     and, toward the latter end, something will hold the thread:
     demand, "Wha hauds?"

Dempster,^3 a true blue Scot I'se warran';
     Thee, aith-detesting, chaste Kilkerran;^4
     An' that glib-gabbit Highland baron,
     The Laird o' Graham;^5
     An' ane, a chap that's damn'd aulfarran',
     Dundas his name:^6

     Erskine, a spunkie Norland billie;^7
     True Campbells, Frederick and Ilay;^8

     [Footnote 2: James Boswell of Auchinleck, the biographer of Johnson.]

     [Footnote 3: George Dempster of Dunnichen.]

     [Footnote 4: Sir Adam Ferguson of Kilkerran, Bart.]

     [Footnote 5: The Marquis of Graham, eldest son of the Duke of
      Montrose.]

     [Footnote 6: Right Hon.

what signifies to you
     His lexicons and grammars;
     The feeling heart's the royal blue,
     And that's wi' Willie Chalmers.

Sae sweetly move her genty limbs,
     Like music notes o'lovers' hymns:
     The diamond-dew in her een sae blue,
     Where laughing love sae wanton swims.
     My lady's gown, &c.

Note To Mr. Renton Of Lamerton

     Your billet, Sir, I grant receipt;
     Wi' you I'll canter ony gate,
     Tho' 'twere a trip to yon blue warl',
     Whare birkies march on burning marl:
     Then, Sir, God willing, I'll attend ye,
     And to his goodness I commend ye.

He roos'd my een sae bonie blue,
     He roos'd my waist sae genty sma';
     An' aye my heart cam to my mou',
     When ne'er a body heard or saw.

His coat is the hue o' his bonnet sae blue,
     His fecket is white as the new-driven snaw;
     His hose they are blae, and his shoon like the slae,
     And his clear siller buckles, they dazzle us a'.

I Gaed A Waefu' Gate Yestreen

     I gaed a waefu' gate yestreen,
     A gate, I fear, I'll dearly rue;
     I gat my death frae twa sweet een,
     Twa lovely een o'bonie blue.

'Twas not her golden ringlets bright,
     Her lips like roses wat wi' dew,
     Her heaving bosom, lily-white--
     It was her een sae bonie blue.

She talk'd, she smil'd, my heart she wyl'd;
     She charm'd my soul I wist na how;
     And aye the stound, the deadly wound,
     Cam frae her een so bonie blue.

But "spare to speak, and spare to speed;"
     She'll aiblins listen to my vow:
     Should she refuse, I'll lay my dead
     To her twa een sae bonie blue.

To end the wark, here's Whistlebirk,
     Lang may his whistle blaw, Jamie;
     And Maxwell true, o' sterling blue;
     And we'll be Johnstones a', Jamie.

Gudewife, Count The Lawin

     Gane is the day, and mirk's the night,
     But we'll ne'er stray for faut o' light;
     Gude ale and bratdy's stars and moon,
     And blue-red wine's the risin' sun.

Combustion thro' our boroughs rode,
     Whistling his roaring pack abroad
     Of mad unmuzzled lions;
     As Queensberry blue and buff unfurl'd,
     And Westerha' and Hopetoun hurled
     To every Whig defiance.

If thou art staunch, without a stain,
     Like the unchanging blue, man;
     This was a kinsman o' thy ain,
     For Matthew was a true man.

Weel-mounted on his grey mare, Meg,
     A better never lifted leg,
     Tam skelpit on thro' dub and mire,
     Despising wind, and rain, and fire;
     Whiles holding fast his gude blue bonnet,
     Whiles crooning o'er some auld Scots sonnet,
     Whiles glow'rin round wi' prudent cares,
     Lest bogles catch him unawares;
     Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh,
     Where ghaists and houlets nightly cry.

Their sarks, instead o' creeshie flainen,
     Been snaw-white seventeen hunder linen!--
     Thir breeks o' mine, my only pair,
     That ance were plush o' guid blue hair,
     I wad hae gien them off my hurdies,
     For ae blink o' the bonie burdies!

I'll pu' the budding rose, when Phoebus peeps in view,
     For it's like a baumy kiss o' her sweet, bonie mou;
     The hyacinth's for constancy wi' its unchanging blue,
     And a' to be a Posie to my ain dear May.

Johnie Lad, Cock Up Your Beaver

     When first my brave Johnie lad came to this town,
     He had a blue bonnet that wanted the crown;
     But now he has gotten a hat and a feather,
     Hey, brave Johnie lad, cock up your beaver!

My Bonie Bell

     The smiling Spring comes in rejoicing,
     And surly Winter grimly flies;
     Now crystal clear are the falling waters,
     And bonie blue are the sunny skies.

It's gude to be merry and wise,
     It's gude to be honest and true;
     It's gude to support Caledonia's cause,
     And bide by the buff and the blue.

Here's to Maitland and Wycombe, let wha doesna like 'em
     Be built in a hole in the wa';
     Here's timmer that's red at the heart
     Here's fruit that is sound at the core;
     And may he be that wad turn the buff and blue coat
     Be turn'd to the back o' the door.

Her e'en, sae bonie blue, betray
     How she repays my passion;
     But prudence is her o'erword aye,
     She talks o' rank and fashion.

Thus, in my arms, wi' a' her charms,
     I clasp my countless treasure;
     I'll seek nae main o' Heav'n to share,
     Tha sic a moment's pleasure:
     And by thy e'en sae bonie blue,
     I swear I'm thine for ever!

Sae flaxen were her ringlets,
     Her eyebrows of a darker hue,
     Bewitchingly o'er-arching
     Twa laughing e'en o' lovely blue;
     Her smiling, sae wyling.

And there will be Kenmure sae gen'rous,
     Whose honour is proof to the storm,
     To save them from stark reprobation,
     He lent them his name in the Firm.
     And there will be lads o' the gospel,
     Muirhead wha's as gude as he's true;
     And there will be Buittle's Apostle,
     Wha's mair o' the black than the blue.

I dighted aye her e'en sae blue,
     An' bann'd the cruel randy,
     And weel I wat, her willin' mou
     Was sweet as sugar-candie.

'Twas Na Her Bonie Blue E'e

     Tune--"Laddie, lie near me."

'Twas na her bonie blue e'e was my ruin,
     Fair tho' she be, that was ne'er my undoin';
     'Twas the dear smile when nae body did mind us,
     'Twas the bewitching, sweet, stown glance o' kindness:
     'Twas the bewitching, sweet, stown glance o' kindness.

Their groves o' sweet myrtle let Foreign Lands reckon,
     Where bright-beaming summers exalt the perfume;
     Far dearer to me yon lone glen o' green breckan,
     Wi' the burn stealing under the lang, yellow broom.
     Far dearer to me are yon humble broom bowers
     Where the blue-bell and gowan lurk, lowly, unseen;
     For there, lightly tripping, among the wild flowers,
     A-list'ning the linnet, aft wanders my Jean.

Blae, blue, livid.

Blue-gown, the livery of the licensed beggar.

Work had not furrowed and
wrinkled his face, as is the case with most peasants who have ten years
of ploughing behind them. He was strong enough to plough ten more years
without looking old, and the prejudice of age must have been very strong
in a young girl's mind to prevent her remarking that Germain had a fresh
complexion, a bright eye, blue as the heavens in May, ruddy lips, superb
teeth, and a body as graceful and supple as that of a colt that has
never left the pasture.

Then, opening his
great blue eyes, and gazing at the branches for a moment, he seemed to
be in a waking dream, or to be impressed by an idea that had come into
his mind during the day and took shape at the approach of sleep.

He began by fastening a laurel branch
adorned with ribbons to the mantel-piece; that is called the _exploit_,
that is to say, the invitation; then he gave to each of the guests a
little cross made of a bit of blue ribbon crossed by another bit of pink
ribbon; the pink for the bride, the blue for the groom; and the guests
were expected to keep that token to wear on the wedding-day, the women
in their caps, the men in their button-holes.

Petit-Pierre had a
full coat of blue-bottle colored cloth, and a cunning little red
waistcoat so short that it hardly came below his chin.

The ladies were somewhat more
fortunate, for they had the advantage of ascertaining from an upper
window that he wore a blue coat, and rode a black horse.

However, I did not hear above one word in
ten, for I was thinking, you may suppose, of my dear Wickham. I longed
to know whether he would be married in his blue coat."

From the moment
when there is light enough to distinguish between purple-blue and white.

Rabbi Eliezar says "between purple-blue and leek-green" (which are
harder to distinguish) (3).

And
the blue sky in which the private earth is buried, the sky with its
eternal calm and full of everlasting orbs is the type of reason.

So it
fortuned that the lord John Chandos rode the same day coasting the
French host, and in like manner the lord of Clermont, one of the
French marshals, had ridden forth and aviewed the state of the English
host; and as these two knights returned towards their hosts, they met
together: each of them bare one manner of device, a blue lady
embroidered in a sunbeam above on their apparel.

Neither was it ever merrier with England than when an
Englishman was known abroad by his own cloth, and contented himself
at home with his fine carsey hosen, and a mean slop; his coat, gown,
and cloak of brown, blue, or puke, with some pretty furniture of
velvet or fur, and a doublet of sad tawny, or black velvet, or other
comely silk, without such cuts and garish colours as are worn in
these days, and never brought in but by the consent of the French,
who think themselves the gayest men when they have most diversities
of jags and change of colours about them. Certes of all estates our
merchants do least alter their attire, and therefore are most to be
commended; for albeit that which they wear be very fine and costly,
yet in form and colour it representeth a great piece of the ancient
gravity appertaining to citizens and burgesses, albeit the younger
sort of their wives, both in attire and costly housekeeping, cannot
tell when and how to make an end, as being women indeed in whom all
kind of curiosity is to be found and seen, and in far greater measure
than in women of higher calling.

I might here name a sort of hues
devised for the nonce, wherewith to please fantastical heads, as
goose-turd green, peas-porridge tawny, popingay blue, lusty gallant,
the devil-in-the-head (I should say the hedge), and such like; but I
pass them over, thinking it sufficient to have said thus much of
apparel generally, when nothing can particularly be spoken of any
constancy thereof.

In like sort as every country house is thus
apparelled on the outside, so is it inwardly divided into sundry
rooms above and beneath; and, where plenty of wood is, they cover
them with tiles, otherwise with straw, sedge, or reed, except some
quarry of slate be near hand, from whence they have for their money
much as may suffice them. The clay wherewith our houses are
impannelled is either white, red, or blue; and of these the first
doth participate very much of the nature of our chalk; the second is
called loam; but the third eftsoons changeth colour as soon as it is
wrought, notwithstanding that it looks blue when it is thrown out of
the pit.

But where the blue clay aboundeth (which hardly
drinketh up the winter's water in long season) there the grass is
speary, rough, and very apt for bushes: by which occasion it becometh
nothing so profitable unto the owner as the other.

If it were requisite that I should speak of the sundry kinds of mould,
as the cledgy, or clay, whereof are divers sorts (red, blue, black,
and white), also the red or white sandy, the loamy, roselly, gravelly,
chalky, or black, I could say that there are so many divers veins in
Britain as elsewhere in any quarter of like quantity in the world.

The colour
of their skin is for the most part like rusty iron or iron grey, but
such as be very old resemble a ruddy blue; and as once in the year (to
wit, in April or about the beginning of May) they cast their old skins
(whereby as it is thought their age reneweth), so their stinging
bringeth death without present remedy be at hand, the wounded never
ceasing to swell, neither the venom to work till the skin of the one
break, and the other ascend upward to the heart, where it finisheth
the natural effect, except the juice of dragons (in Latin called
_dracunculus minor_) be speedily ministered and drunk in strong ale,
or else some other medicine taken of like force that may countervail
and overcome the venom of the same.

CLVI

     The king commands to sound the alarm.
     To the trumpet the Franks alight and arm;
     With casque and corselet and gilded brand,
     Buckler and stalwart lance in hand,
     Pennons of crimson and white and blue,
     The barons leap on their steeds anew,
     And onward spur the passes through;
     Nor is there one but to other saith,
     "Could we reach but Roland before his death,
     Blows would we strike for him grim and great."

Blue as a
hyacinth were the eyes.

I gave him a hundred blue-coloured
weapons of battle.

A spear he hath, blue-red, hand-fitting, on its puissant shaft.

of a blue-fronted wave: two hides by a tree.

Blue as hyacinth was one of
his eyes, dark as a stag-beetle's back was the other.

I see his two blue-bright cheeks, etc.

Light yellow hair was on them. Blue kilts they wore.

A stead wherein is the king of a cantred, whom
each man takes from bosom to bosom.

"So he is with a blue silvery chair under his seat in the midst of the
house, and he always a-wailing.

Three blue
mantles around them, and three bedgowns with red insertion over them.
Their arms had been hung above them on the wall."

Two ruddy cheeks he
had, and an eye very blue and beautiful.

Or the still heat, when on his noonday bed
The breathless blue sea sank without a wave!....

An immense
mountain covered with a shining green turf, is nothing, in this respect,
to one dark and gloomy; the cloudy sky is more grand than the blue; and
night more sublime and solemn than day.

Therefore in historical
painting, a gay or gaudy drapery can never have a happy effect: and in
buildings, when the highest degree of the sublime is intended, the
materials and ornaments ought neither to be white, nor green, nor
yellow, nor blue, nor of a pale red, nor violet, nor spotted, but of
sad and fuscous colors, as black, or brown, or deep purple, and the
like.

But to
this I answer, that admitting an equal number of rays, or an equal
quantity of luminous particles to strike the eye at all times, yet if
these rays frequently vary their nature, now to blue, now to red, and so
on, or their manner of termination, as to a number of petty squares,
triangles, or the like, at every change, whether of color or shape, the
organ has a sort of relaxation or rest; but this relaxation and labor so
often interrupted, is by no means productive of ease; neither has it the
effect of vigorous and uniform labor.

Suppose
I look at a bottle of muddy liquor, of a blue or red color; the blue or
red rays cannot pass clearly to the eye, but are suddenly and unequally
stopped by the intervention of little opaque bodies, which without
preparation change the idea, and change it too into one disagreeable in
its own nature, conformably to the principles laid down in Sect.

The second are they that stand for one simple idea of
such compositions, and no more; as red, blue, round, square, and the
like.

_Simple abstracts_ are used to
signify some one simple idea without much adverting to others which may
chance to attend it, as blue, green, hot, cold, and the like; these are
capable of affecting all three of the purposes of words; as the
_aggregate_ words, man, castle, horse, &c.

But it is probable that the words red,
blue, green, answered to him as well as the ideas of the colors
themselves; for the ideas of greater or lesser degrees of refrangibility
being applied to these words, and the blind man being instructed in what
other respects they were found to agree or to disagree, it was as easy
for him to reason upon the words as if he had been fully master of the
ideas.

Neither
when I spoke of red, or blue, and green, as well as refrangibility, had
I these several colors, or the rays of light passing into a different
medium, and there diverted from their course, painted before me in the
way of images.

O, treble woe
Fall ten times treble on that cursed head
Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense
Depriv'd thee of!--Hold off the earth awhile,
Till I have caught her once more in mine arms:
[Leaps into the grave.]
Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead,
Till of this flat a mountain you have made,
To o'ertop old Pelion or the skyish head
Of blue Olympus.

From the time I joined, I believe I thought
Nolan was a sort of lay chaplain,--a chaplain with a blue coat.

The blue Hellespont
has no voice but separation, except to Paul.

This disk is charged with a salt of potash, which, when the electric
spark passes through it, is changed to Prussian blue.

Your despatch is
noiselessly written in dark blue dots and lines.

Some of his old officers sailed with him.

We know nothing of Captain Kellett but what his own letters, despatches,
and instructions show, as they are now printed in enormous parliamentary
blue-books, and what the despatches and letters of his officers and of
his commander show.

And she drifts
here and there,--drifts out of sight of her little consort,--strands on
a bit of ice floe now, and then is swept off from it,--and finds
herself, without even the "Intrepid's" company, alone on these blue seas
with those white shores.

He was dressed in a green
baize roundabout and faded blue overalls, worn sadly at the knee.

(Dennis is
good-looking.) Three of them, with arms behind the others' waists,
followed him up to the wagon he rode home in; and a little girl with a
blue sash had been sent to give him a rosebud.

He owed us
all six months' wages, and we were all very poor and very blue.

Two ushers with
blue sashes almost held me down; they showed me the whole assembly
sinking into quiet.

I could have collared that grinning blue
sash.

Well-disposed people saw they need
stay no longer; ill-disposed people dared not stay; the blue-coated men
with buttons sauntered on the stage in groups, and I suppose the worst
rowdies disappeared as they saw them. I had made my single speech, and
for the moment I was a hero.

The first attempts, indeed, were put to an end, when Schofield
crossed the Blue Lick, and destroyed the dams on Yellow Branch.

When I came to myself I was in the blue chamber; I had vinegar on a
brown paper on my forehead; the room was dark, and I found mother
sitting by me, glad enough indeed to hear my voice, and to know that I
knew her.

The new rags had blue backs, and were numbered, some as high as fifty
dollars.

I do not know what was in my bed, but I had something hard
under me, and am all over black and blue.

But God's
warm sun streamed through the open window; lovely roses nodded from
the wooden flower-boxes on the roof, and two sky-blue birds sang
rejoicingly, while the sick mother implored God's richest blessings on
her pious daughter.

Besides, you good-for-nothing
rascal, it is strictly forbidden to catch birds in the royal gardens of
Fredericksburg; but your blue uniform betrays where you come from."

Lake Thracymene, illumined by the evening sun, lay like flaming
gold between the dark-blue mountain-ridges; here, where Hannibal
defeated Flaminius, the rivers now held each other in their green
embraces; lovely, half-naked children tended a herd of black swine,
beneath a group of fragrant laurel-trees, hard by the road-side.

On one branch there hung little nets cut out of colored paper, and
each net was filled with sugarplums; and among the other boughs gilded
apples and walnuts were suspended, looking as though they had grown
there, and little blue and white tapers were placed among the leaves.

One winter's day, when the flakes of snow were
flying about, he spread the skirts of his blue coat, and caught the snow
as it fell.

And, as it seemed to her, the blue waves nodded in a strange manner;
then she took off her red shoes, the most precious things she possessed,
and threw them both into the river.

Presently she sailed by a large cherry-orchard, where was
a little cottage with curious red and blue windows; it was thatched,
and before it two wooden soldiers stood sentry, and presented arms when
anyone went past.

Gerda called to them, for she thought they were alive; but they, of
course, did not answer.

The windows were very high up; the glass was red, blue, and green, and
the sunlight shone through quite wondrously in all sorts of colors.

Gerda jumped for joy, and played till the sun set behind
the tall cherry-tree; she then had a pretty bed, with a red silken
coverlet filled with blue violets.

The robe of the one was red, that of the second blue, and
that of the third white.

And her
mother took hold of her nose, and pinched it till it was red and blue;
but this was all done out of pure love.

You
have more than a hundred miles to go before you get to Finland; there
the Snow Queen has her country-house, and burns blue lights every
evening.

was again heard in the air; the most charming
blue lights burned the whole night in the sky, and at last they came to
Finland.

Little Kay was quite blue, yes nearly black with cold; but he did not
observe it, for she had kissed away all feeling of cold from his body,
and his heart was a lump of ice.

On her bosom she had a real Elderflower,
and in her yellow waving hair a wreath of the flowers; her eyes were so
large and blue that it was a pleasure to look at them; she kissed the
boy, and now they were of the same age and felt alike.

And suddenly the
atmosphere grew as blue again as before; the forest grew red, and green,
and yellow-colored.

The sea was dark blue, covered with ships full
of white sails; and in the barn old women, maidens, and children were
sitting picking hops into a large cask; the young sang songs, but the
old told fairy tales of mountain-sprites and soothsayers.

And the boy grew up to be a lad, and was to go forth
in the wide world-far, far away to warm lands, where the coffee-tree
grows; but at his departure the little maiden took an Elder-blossom from
her bosom, and gave it him to keep; and it was placed between the leaves
of his Prayer-Book; and when in foreign lands he opened the book, it
was always at the place where the keepsake-flower lay; and the more he
looked at it, the fresher it became; he felt as it were, the fragrance
of the Danish groves; and from among the leaves of the flowers he could
distinctly see the little maiden, peeping forth with her bright blue
eyes--and then she whispered, "It is delightful here in Spring, Summer,
Autumn, and Winter"; and a hundred visions glided before his mind.

The little maiden, with the blue eyes, and with
Elder-blossoms in her hair, sat in the tree, nodded to both of them,
and said, "To-day is the fiftieth anniversary!"

cried she, and stretched her hands out over a little blue
crocus, that hung quite sickly on one side.

So the
little maiden walked on with her tiny naked feet, that were quite red
and blue from cold.

When she spoke it sounded just like the noise of frogs, or as if one
walked with great boots over a moor; always the same tone, so uniform
and so tiring that little Tuk fell into a good sound sleep, which, by
the bye, could not do him any harm.

But even in this sleep there came a dream, or whatever else it was: his
little sister Augusta, she with the blue eyes and the fair curling hair,
was suddenly a tall, beautiful girl, and without having wings was yet
able to fly; and she now flew over Zealand--over the green woods and the
blue lakes.

The fourth river
goes out on the opposite side, and falls first of all into a wild and
savage region, which is all of a dark-blue colour, like lapis lazuli;
and this is that river which is called the Stygian river, and falls into
and forms the Lake Styx, and after falling into the lake and receiving
strange powers in the waters, passes under the earth, winding round
in the opposite direction, and comes near the Acherusian lake from the
opposite side to Pyriphlegethon.

Simple hearts put all the history and customs of this world
behind them, and play their own play in innocent defiance of the
Blue-Laws[347] of the world; and such would appear, could we see the
human race assembled in vision, like little children frolicking
together; though, to the eyes of mankind at large, they wear a stately
and solemn garb of works and influences.

The blue zenith is the point in which romance and
reality meet.

In their soft glances, I see what men strove to
realize in some Versailles,[482] or Paphos,[483] or Ctesiphon.[484]
Indeed, it is the magical lights of the horizon, and the blue sky for
the background, which save all our works of art, which were otherwise
baubles.

"We were," says
James Russell Lowell, "still socially and intellectually moored to
English thought, till Emerson cut the cable and gave us a chance at
the dangers and glories of blue water."]

[Footnote 4: Pole-star.

"Pity
that should be cut," he said, "that has never committed treason."]

[Footnote 347: Blue Laws.

An editor comments on the fact
that during the last years of Emerson's life "the little blue
self-heal crept into the grass before his study window."]


SHAKESPEARE; OR, THE POET

[Footnote 525: Shakespeare; or the Poet is one of seven essays on
great men in various walks of life, published in 1850 under the title
of _Representative Men_.

Minerva sent them a fair wind from
the West, {22} that whistled over the deep blue waves {23} whereon
Telemachus told them to catch hold of the ropes and hoist sail, and they
did as he told them. They set the mast in its socket in the cross plank,
raised it, and made it fast with the forestays; then they hoisted their
white sails aloft with ropes of twisted ox hide.

As the sail bellied out
with the wind, the ship flew through the deep blue water, and the foam
hissed against her bows as she sped onward.

With these
words she took off her veil and gave it him. Then she dived down again
like a sea-gull and vanished beneath the dark blue waters.

The walls on either side were of bronze from end to end, and the
cornice was of blue enamel.

Once when she
was taking a walk by his side as usual, Neptune, disguised as her lover,
lay with her at the mouth of the river, and a huge blue wave arched
itself like a mountain over them to hide both woman and god, whereon he
loosed her virgin girdle and laid her in a deep slumber.

On the one hand there are some overhanging rocks against which
the deep blue waves of Amphitrite beat with terrific fury; the blessed
gods call these rocks the Wanderers.

Her prow curvetted as it were
the neck of a stallion, and a great wave of dark blue water seethed in
her wake.

On this Minerva came close up to him and said, "Son of Arceisius---best
friend I have in the world--pray to the blue-eyed damsel, and to Jove
her father; then poise your spear and hurl it."

XXIII

  And sullen Moloch fled,
  Hath left in shadows dred,
  His burning Idol all of blackest hue,
  In vain with Cymbals ring,
  They call the grisly king,
  In dismall dance about the furnace Blue;                            210
  And Brutish gods of Nile as fast,
  lsis and Orus, and the Dog Anubis hast.




THE PASSION.

Ofttimes while he mused--as motionless
    As the fixed rock his seat--the squirrel leaped
    Upon his knee, the timid quail led forth
    Her brood between his feet, and blue doves pecked
    The rice-grains from the bowl beside his hand.

Why nothing capital of my master's wardrobe has drop'd lately--but
I could give you a mortgage on some of his winter Cloaths with equity
of redemption before November or--you shall have the reversion--of the
French velvet, or a post obit on the Blue and Silver--these I
should think Moses--with a few Pair of Point Ruffles as a collateral
security--hey, my little Fellow?

Here's to the charmer whose dimples we prize;
        Now to the maid who has none, sir;
     Here's to the girl with a pair of blue eyes,
        And here's to the nymph with but one, sir.

"Anight my shallop, rustling thro'
     The low and bloomèd foliage, drove
     The fragrant, glistening deeps, and clove
   The citron-shadows in the blue:
     By garden porches on the brim,
   The costly doors flung open wide,
     Gold glittering thro' lamplight dim,
   And broider'd sofas on each side:
     In sooth it was a goodly time,
     For it was in the golden prime
       Of good Haroun Alraschid."

The fisherman did not doubt of
taking some, because he saw a great number in the water; but he was
extremely surprised when he found they were of four colours; white, red,
blue, and yellow.

The white are the Mussulmans; the red, the Persians, who
worship fire; the blue, the Christians; and the yellow, the Jews.

Some bore fruit entirely white, and some clear and
transparent as crystal; some pale red, and others deeper; some green,
blue, and purple, and others yellow: in short, there was fruit of all
colours.

The white were pearls; the clear and transparent, diamonds; the
deep red, rubies; the green, emeralds; the blue, turquoises; the purple,
amethysts; and those that were of yellow cast, sapphires.

They then conducted me into the
palace, where I saw ten benches, upon each of which was a mattress
covered with a blue stuff; and each of the young men seated himself upon
one of these benches, while the sheikh took his place upon a smaller
one; after which they said to me: "Sit down, O young man, and ask no
question respecting our condition, nor respecting our being blind of one
eye."

And the fisherman
came forth and broke it; whereupon there proceeded from it a blue smoke,
which united with the clouds of heaven; and they heard a horrible voice,
saying: "Repentance!

He was mounted on a white charger, who had a bit and shoes of gold, his
housing was of blue satin embroidered with pearls; the hilt of his
cimeter was of one single diamond, and the scabbard of sandalwood,
adorned with emeralds and rubies, and on his shoulder he carried his bow
and quiver.

If you had been a lord with a blue
riband, who flattered his vanity, or could help his ambition, he would
have been the most delightful company in the world.

And so the
reputation of wit and great learning does the office of a blue riband or
a coach and six."

They are all on their knees before him.  Down go my lord
bishop's apron, and his Grace's blue riband, and my lady's brocade
petticoat in the mud.

Through the storms
and tempests of his furious mind, the stars of religion and love break
out in the blue, shining serenely, though hidden by the driving clouds
and the maddened hurricane of his life.

There
at length the swarthy Moor and Spaniard were seen to meet the blue-eyed
Gaul; and the Cappadocian, late subject of Mithridates, gazed without
alarm at the haughty conquering Roman.

Many a more fruitful coast or isle is washed by the blue Aegean, many a
spot is there more beautiful or sublime to see, many a territory more
ample; but there was one charm in Attica, which in the same perfection
was nowhere else.

Pictures are drawn in tales of romance, of
spirits seemingly too beautiful in their fall to be really fallen, and
the holy Pope at Rome, Gregory, in fact, and not in fiction, looked
upon the blue eyes and golden hair of the fierce Saxon youth in the
slave market, and pronounced them Angels, not Angles; and the spell
which this once loyal daughter of the Church still exercises upon the
foreign visitor, even now when her true glory is departed, suggests to
us how far more majestic and more touching, how brimful of
indescribable influence would be the presence of a University, which
was planted within, not without Jerusalem,--an influence, potent as her
truth is strong, wide as her sway is world-wide, and growing, not
lessening, by the extent of space over which its attraction would be
exerted.

And yet I cannot--though there is no part of my subject that I
feel more--press this upon you; for we made so little use of the power
of nature while we had it, that we shall hardly feel what we have lost.
Just on the other side of the Mersey you have your Snowdon, and your
Menai Straits, and that mighty granite rock beyond the moors of
Anglesea, splendid in its heatherly crest, and foot planted in the deep
sea, once thought of as sacred--a divine promontory, looking westward;
the Holy Head or Headland, still not without awe when its red light
glares first through storm.  These are the hills, and these the bays
and blue inlets, which, among the Greeks, would have been always loved,
always fateful in influence on the national mind.

He
recognizes the ambrosia, which nourishes his soul, in the bright orbs
that shine in Heaven, in the volutes of the flower, in the clustering
of low shrubberies, in the waving of the grain-fields, in the slanting
of the tall, Eastern trees, in the blue distance of mountains, in the
grouping of clouds, in the twinkling of half-hidden brooks, in the
gleaming of silver rivers, in the repose of sequestered lakes, in the
star-mirroring depths of lonely wells.

"And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
  And now was dropped into the western bay;
  At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue;
  To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new."

[Exeunt CASTRUCCIO and Old Lady]
  I observe our duchess
  Is sick a-days, she pukes, her stomach seethes,
  The fins of her eye-lids look most teeming blue,[38]
  She wanes i' the cheek, and waxes fat i' the flank,
  And, contrary to our Italian fashion,
  Wears a loose-bodied gown:  there 's somewhat in 't.

"There's a plain statement of your
practises."]

[Footnote 38: Blue like those of a woman with child.]

[Footnote 39: Scurf.]

[Footnote 40: Person of highest influence.]

[Footnote 41: Hysteria.]

[Footnote 42: This year.]

[Footnote 43: Clearly.]

[Footnote 44: Youngster.]

[Footnote 45: A hall in the same palace.]

[Footnote 46: Crossness.]

[Footnote 47: Always.]

[Footnote 48: The meaner servants.]

[Footnote 49: At once.]

[Footnote 50: Cast his horoscope.]

[Footnote 51: The court of the same palace.]

[Footnote 52: Making an astrological calculation.]

[Footnote 53: Going to the root of the matter.]

[Footnote 54: Write.]

[Footnote 55: i.e., on his handkerchief.]

[Footnote 56: Addressing the lantern.]

[Footnote 57: "The rest not considered."]

[Footnote 58: A piece of news.]

[Footnote 59: Cleverly contrived.]

[Footnote 60: Rome.

But first, to reconcile the blue-ey'd maid
  For her stol'n statue and her tow'r betray'd,
  Warn'd by the seer, to her offended name
  We rais'd and dedicate this wondrous frame,
  So lofty, lest thro' your forbidden gates
  It pass, and intercept our better fates:
  For, once admitted there, our hopes are lost;
  And Troy may then a new Palladium boast;
  For so religion and the gods ordain,
  That, if you violate with hands profane
  Minerva's gift, your town in flames shall burn,
  (Which omen, O ye gods, on Graecia turn!)
  But if it climb, with your assisting hands,
  The Trojan walls, and in the city stands;
  Then Troy shall Argos and Mycenae burn,
  And the reverse of fate on us return.'

With both his hands he labors at the knots;
  His holy fillets the blue venom blots;
  His roaring fills the flitting air around.

As when some peasant, in a bushy brake,
  Has with unwary footing press'd a snake;
  He starts aside, astonish'd, when he spies
  His rising crest, blue neck, and rolling eyes;
  So from our arms surpris'd Androgeos flies.

In mournful pomp the matrons walk the round,
  With baleful cypress and blue fillets crown'd,
  With eyes dejected, and with hair unbound.

Scarce had he finish'd, when, with speckled pride,
  A serpent from the tomb began to glide;
  His hugy bulk on sev'n high volumes roll'd;
  Blue was his breadth of back, but streak'd with scaly gold:
  Thus riding on his curls, he seem'd to pass
  A rolling fire along, and singe the grass.

Space
  Star-sprinkled, and void place
  From pole to pole of the Blue, from bound to bound,
  Hath Thee in every spot,
  Thee, Thee!--Where Thou art not,
  O Holy, Marvellous Form!

During which time, there made forth to us a small boat, with about
eight persons in it; whereof one of them had in his hand a tipstaff of
a yellow cane, tipped at both ends with blue, who came aboard our ship,
without any show of distrust at all.

During which time, we
had every hour joy of the amendment of our sick; who thought themselves
cast into some divine pool of healing; they mended so kindly, and so
fast.

The morrow after our three days were past, there came to us a new man,
that we had not seen before, clothed in blue as the former was, save
that his turban was white, with a small red cross on the top.

The Tirsan cometh forth with all his generation or linage, the males
before him, and the females following him; and if there be a mother
from whose body the whole linage is descended, there is a traverse
placed in a loft above on the right hand of the chair, with a privy
door, and a carved window of glass, leaded with gold and blue; where
she sitteth, but is not seen.

He was carried in a rich chariot without wheels, litter-wise; with two
horses at either end, richly trapped in blue velvet embroidered; and
two footmen on each side in the like attire.

The chariot was covered with
cloth of gold tissued upon blue.

He had before him fifty attendants,
young men all, in white satin loose coats to the mid leg; and stockings
of white silk; and shoes of blue velvet; and hats of blue velvet; with
fine plumes of diverse colours, set round like hat-bands.

Next before
the chariot, went two men, bare-headed, in linen garments down the
foot, girt, and shoes of blue velvet; who carried, the one a crosier,
the other a pastoral staff like a sheep-hook; neither of them of metal,
but the crosier of balm-wood, the pastoral staff of cedar.

He sat alone, upon
cushions of a kind of excellent plush, blue; and under his foot curious
carpets of silk of diverse colours, like the Persian, but far finer.

He was set upon
a low Throne richly adorned, and a rich cloth of state over his head,
of blue satin embroidered.

The first is red, the second orange, the third yellow, the
fourth green, the fifth blue, the sixth indigo, the seventh a
violet-purple.

He has calculated in these
glasses the proportion of the scattering of the red and of the blue rays;
and proceeding so far as to demonstrate things which were not supposed
even to exist, he examines the inequalities which arise from the shape or
figure of the glass, and that which arises from the refrangibility.

She has abundance of soul,
which flashes from her deep blue eyes.

It cost me much to part with the blue coat which I wore the first time I
danced with Charlotte.

they grow as plentifully as weeds; I have been
looking for them these two days, and cannot find them. There are flowers
out there, yellow, blue, and red; and that centaury has a very pretty
blossom: but I can find none of them."

All of a sudden there was a great uproar of shouting, singing
and the balalaïka, and from the tavern a number of big and very drunken
peasants came out, wearing red and blue shirts and coats thrown over
their shoulders.

And it was so cool, it was
wonderful, wonderful, blue, cold water running among the parti-coloured
stones and over the clean sand which glistened here and there like
gold....

Her light blue dress trimmed with white lace floated
about the table like an air-balloon and filled almost half the room. She
smelt of scent.

The sky was without
a cloud and the water was almost bright blue, which is so rare in the
Neva.

"Red notes and
blue, twenty-five roubles.

Sonia was a small thin girl of eighteen with fair hair, rather
pretty, with wonderful blue eyes.

She could not have been called pretty, but
her blue eyes were so clear, and when they lighted up, there was such
a kindliness and simplicity in her expression that one could not help
being attracted.

His eyes were blue and had a cold and thoughtful look; his lips were
crimson.

A plain, deal table covered by a
blue cloth stood against the same wall, close to the door into the other
flat.

He gazed at that pale, thin, irregular, angular little face, those soft
blue eyes, which could flash with such fire, such stern energy, that
little body still shaking with indignation and anger--and it all seemed
to him more and more strange, almost impossible.

His eyes were somehow
too blue and their expression somehow too heavy and fixed.

There where you have made your bed
     In it lie; for, wet or dry,
     Let what will for me betide you,
     Burning, blowing, freezing, hailing;
     Famine waste you: devil ride you:
     Tempest baste you black and blue:
     (To Rosaura.)
     There!

And if the chain
     You help'd to rivet round me did contract
     Since guiltless infancy from guilt in act;
     Of what in aspiration or in thought
     Guilty, but in resentment of the wrong
     That wreaks revenge on wrong I never wrought
     By excommunication from the free
     Inheritance that all created life,
     Beside myself, is born to--from the wings
     That range your own immeasurable blue,
     Down to the poor, mute, scale-imprison'd things,
     That yet are free to wander, glide, and pass
     About that under-sapphire, whereinto
     Yourselves transfusing you yourselves englass!

On one of these occasions, he presented for the first tine to
Mannering his tall, gaunt, awkward, bony figure, attired in a
threadbare suit of blacks with a coloured handkerchief, not over
clean, about his sinewy, scraggy neck, and his nether person
arrayed in gray breeches, dark-blue stockings, clouted shoes, and
small copper buckles.

She was standing upon one of those high precipitous banks, which,
as we before noticed, overhung the road; so that she was placed
considerably higher than Ellangowan, even though he was on
horseback; and her tall figure, relieved against the clear blue
sky, seemed almost of supernatural stature.

Some time afterwards the discharges of several cannon
were heard at a distance, and, after an interval, a still louder
explosion, as of a vessel blown up, and a cloud of smoke rose above
the trees, and mingled with the blue sky.

Whenever they observed
this dubious expression gather upon his countenance, accompanied
with a glance, that fixed now upon the sleeve of his coat, now upon
the knees of his breeches, where he probably missed some antique
patching and darning, which, being executed with blue thread upon a
black ground, had somewhat the effect of embroidery, they always
took care to turn his attention into some other channel, until his
garments, "by the aid of use, cleaved to their mould."

Despite my Dutch education, a blue hill to me is as a
friend, and a roaring torrent like the sound of a domestic song
that hath soothed my infancy.

Sometimes a breath of wind made the
scene visible, the blue rill glittering as it twined itself through
its rude and solitary dell.

"And if they do not, you can do that for them, eh, Mrs.
Mac-Candlish?--ha, ha, ha!--But this young man that I inquire after
was upwards of six feet high, had a dark frock, with metal buttons,
light-brown hair unpowdered, blue eyes, and a straight nose,
travelled on foot, had no servant or baggage.--you surely can
remember having seen such a traveller?"

But Mannering was chiefly delighted with the view from the windows,
which commanded that incomparable prospect of the ground between
Edinburgh and the sea; the Firth of Forth, with its islands; the
embayment which is terminated by the Law of North Berwick; and the
varied shores of Fife to the northward, indenting with a hilly
outline the clear blue horizon.

"Of a surety," said the Dominie, taking his blue-checked
handkerchief from his eyes, "that was a bitter day with me indeed;
ay, and a day of grief hard to be borne--but He giveth strength who
layeth on the load."

He had passed, therefore, the turn of the road which led to that
mansion, only edified by the distant appearance of the blue smoke,
curling against the pale sky of the winter evening, when he thought
he beheld the Dominie taking a footpath for the house through the
woods.

The bag, being opened, was found to contain a blue silk
case, front which was drawn a scheme of nativity.

Then in the long, pointed windows, glass of a thousand hues;
at the wide entrances to the hall, rich doors, finely sculptured; and
all, the vaults, pillars, walls, jambs, panelling, doors, statues,
covered from top to bottom with a splendid blue and gold illumination,
which, a trifle tarnished at the epoch when we behold it, had almost
entirely disappeared beneath dust and spiders in the year of grace,
1549, when du Breul still admired it from tradition.

It is quite certain that you have not, more than once (and
for my part, I have passed whole days, the best employed of my life, at
it) followed from thicket to thicket, by the side of running water, on a
sunny day, a beautiful green or blue dragon-fly, breaking its flight in
abrupt angles, and kissing the tips of all the branches.

Continuing to mount the stories of this amphitheatre of palaces spread
out afar upon the ground, after crossing a deep ravine hollowed out
of the roofs in the Town, which marked the passage of the Rue
Saint-Antoine, the eye reached the house of Angoulême, a vast
construction of many epochs, where there were perfectly new and very
white parts, which melted no better into the whole than a red patch on a
blue doublet.

He seldom rallied the poor
students of Montaigu on the _cappettes_ from which they derived their
name, or the bursars of the college of Dormans on their shaved tonsure,
and their surtout parti-colored of bluish-green, blue, and violet cloth,
_azurini coloris et bruni_, as says the charter of the Cardinal des
Quatre-Couronnes.

Two sergeants of the Parloir-aux-Bourgeois,
clothed in their jackets of Toussaint, half red, half blue, were
posted as sentinels before a low, closed door, which was visible at
the extremity of the hall, behind the table.

Their
fine white ruffs; their petticoats of linsey-woolsey, striped red and
blue; their white knitted stockings, with clocks embroidered in colors,
well drawn upon their legs; the square-toed shoes of tawny leather with
black soles, and, above all, their headgear, that sort of tinsel horn,
loaded down with ribbons and laces, which the women of Champagne still
wear, in company with the grenadiers of the imperial guard of Russia,
announced that they belonged to that class wives which holds the middle
ground between what the lackeys call a woman and what they term a lady.

Nevertheless, at intervals, her blue lips half opened to admit a breath,
and trembled, but as dead and as mechanical as the leaves which the wind
sweeps aside.

Whereupon Colombe de Gaillefontaine, another beautiful blonde, with a
white skin, dressed to the neck in blue damask, ventured a timid remark
which she addressed to Fleur-de-Lys, in the hope that the handsome
captain would reply to it, "My dear Gondelaurier, have you seen the
tapestries of the Hôtel de la Roche-Guyon?"

"Were I to
succeed, I should behold the blue spark flash from the head of the nail.

She was pale; her tresses, formerly so gracefully braided and spangled
with sequins, hung in disorder; her lips were blue, her hollow eyes were
terrible.

Her dress thick set with
spangles, blue, and dotted with a thousand sparks, gleamed like a summer
night.

to
love her foot, her arm, her shoulder, to think of her blue veins, of her
brown skin, until one writhes for whole nights together on the pavement
of one's cell, and to behold all those caresses which one has dreamed
of, end in torture!

She thinks she sees it, she does see it,
complete, living, joyous, with its delicate hands, its round head, its
pure lips, its serene eyes whose white is blue.

One May morning, when the sun was rising on one of those dark blue skies
against which Garofolo loves to place his Descents from the Cross, the
recluse of the Tour-Roland heard a sound of wheels, of horses and irons
in the Place de Grève.

Her magnificent blond hair was plaited in a ravishing manner, she
was dressed entirely in that sky blue which becomes fair people so well,
a bit of coquetry which she had learned from Colombe, and her eyes were
swimming in that languor of love which becomes them still better.

She raised her dry, red eyes to
heaven, to the sun, to the silvery clouds, cut here and there by a blue
trapezium or triangle; then she lowered them to objects around her, to
the earth, the throng, the houses; all at once, while the yellow man was
binding her elbows, she uttered a terrible cry, a cry of joy.

While this hurricane of despair overturned, broke, tore up, bent,
uprooted everything in his soul, he gazed at nature around him. At his
feet, some chickens were searching the thickets and pecking, enamelled
beetles ran about in the sun; overhead, some groups of dappled gray
clouds were floating across the blue sky; on the horizon, the spire
of the Abbey Saint-Victor pierced the ridge of the hill with its slate
obelisk; and the miller of the Copeaue hillock was whistling as he
watched the laborious wings of his mill turning.

The long windows of the choir showed the upper
extremities of their arches above the black draperies, and their painted
panes, traversed by a ray of moonlight had no longer any hues but the
doubtful colors of night, a sort of violet, white and blue, whose tint
is found only on the faces of the dead.

From time to time she heard the loud laughter, the noisy voice
of Quasimodo in her ear; she half opened her eyes; then below her she
confusedly beheld Paris checkered with its thousand roofs of slate and
tiles, like a red and blue mosaic, above her head the frightful and
joyous face of Quasimodo.

"The weasel is called Adrune; the fox, Blue-foot, or the Racer of the
Woods; the wolf, Gray-foot, or Gold-foot; the bear the Old Man, or
Grandfather.

The racing drivers
used to adopt one of four colours--red, blue, white, or green--and their
partisans showed an eagerness in supporting them which nothing could
surpass.

These were called Factiones, and each had its distinguishing
colour: russata (red), albata (white), veneta (blue), prasina (green).

grey or greyish blue; hence, dulled, dimmed.

The Arabians
have a great aversion to blue and grey eyes as characteristic of their
enemies the Greeks.

Berachoth, 1, 2, "Prayer is to be said as soon as one can
distinguish between a blue and white thread."

The water is of a clear sky-blue, though with somewhat of a
greenish tinge; its smell is sulphurous, and its flavour has medicinal
properties, and is deemed of great efficacy in all fractures of the
limbs, which it is supposed to heal.

M.]

[Footnote 134: The performers at these gaines were divided into companies,
distinguished by the particular colour of their habits; the principal of
which were the white, the red, the blue, and the green.

I had
rooms on Riva Schiavoni, at the top of a house near the passage leading
off to San Zaccaria; the waterside life, the wondrous lagoon spread
before me, and the ceaseless human chatter of Venice came in at my
windows, to which I seem to myself to have been constantly driven, in
the fruitless fidget of composition, as if to see whether, out in the
blue channel, the ship of some right suggestion, of some better phrase,
of the next happy twist of my subject, the next true touch for my
canvas, mightn't come into sight.

He was not romantically, he
was much rather obscurely, handsome; but his physiognomy had an air of
requesting your attention, which it rewarded according to the charm you
found in blue eyes of remarkable fixedness, the eyes of a complexion
other than his own, and a jaw of the somewhat angular mould which is
supposed to bespeak resolution.

I had never been more blue, more bored, than for a week
before she came; I had never expected less that anything pleasant would
happen.

She came rustling in
quickly, apologising for being late, fastening a bracelet, dressed in
dark blue satin, which exposed a white bosom that was ineffectually
covered by a curious silver necklace.

A small pink face surmounted by a blue
velvet bonnet and set off by a stiff embroidered collar had become the
countenance of her childish dreams; and she had firmly believed for some
time afterwards that the heavenly hosts conversed among themselves in
a queer little dialect of French-English, expressing the properest
sentiments, as when Edward told her that he was "defended" by his _bonne_
to go near the edge of the lake, and that one must always obey to one's
_bonne_.

I would give you my blue beads,"
the child went on.

The sense of the terrible human past was heavy to her,
but that of something altogether contemporary would suddenly give it
wings that it could wave in the blue.

The sky was a blaze of blue, and the plash of the fountains
in their mossy niches had lost its chill and doubled its music.

You seemed to
me to be soaring far up in the blue--to be, sailing in the bright light,
over the heads of men.

Unless it be to that young
lady in the blue dress.

He blushed
a good deal and laughed, he assured her that he was often very blue,
and that when he was blue he was awfully fierce.

His eyes are blue:
     But leave my hawks alone!

Nay, worked such prodigies as sparing you
     Lord Mertoun's pedigree before the flood,
     Which Thorold seemed in very act to tell
     --Or bringing Austin to pluck up that most
     Firm-rooted heresy--your suitor's eyes,
     He would maintain, were grey instead of blue--
     I think I brought him to contrition!--Well,
     I have not done such things, (all to deserve
     A minute's quiet cousin's talk with you,)
     To be dismissed so coolly.

Mildred, the Earl has soft blue eyes!

Is moved at midnight higher up
     To one pane--a small dark-blue pane; he waits
     For that among the boughs:  at sight of that,
     I see him, plain as I see you, my lord,
     Open the lady's casement, enter there...

While on the grassy plain
Dancers are springing;
Climbing the steep hill's side,
Skimming the glassy tide,
Wander they there;
Others on pinions wide
Wing the blue air;
All lifeward tending, upward still wending,
Towards yonder stars that gleam,
Far, far above;
Stars from whose tender beam
Rains blissful love.

The manly, sunburnt faces bore a somewhat strange aspect here in the
cool early summer time, and one or two wore a red shirt, or a blue
Scotch bonnet brought from that wonderful Rio.

But when the post had been despatched, and the hour of three--the
usual hour for dinner parties--approached, and when the Consul had
shaved himself carefully, and had applied himself to sundry pots and
flasks of pomades and essences, he stepped up the broad staircase,
dressed in a long-skirted blue coat with bright buttons, a closely
fitting waistcoat, and a frilled shirt with a diamond breast-pin, his
comely iron-grey hair slightly powdered and curled.

Sometimes she leant forward, and as she turned her head on one side,
gazing up at the narrow streak of blue sky which was visible between
the roofs, her dark eyes shone with a guileless, rapturous light, as
if they were piercing the vault of heaven itself.

Nor could any one forget the quiet Saturday afternoons when all left
the house in order not to disturb the pastor, who was preparing his
sermon in the study, the smoke of his pipe stealing out of the
keyhole like a blue serpent.

Officers of the Citizen Corps, in their blue tail coats with white
facings, run here and there, and with their long swords are in the
way both of themselves and of every one else.

Such was the condition of the place at that time--an old town of new
ideas, narrow, crooked, unenlightened, and yet religious; at the same
time fresh and bright, looking down upon the blue sea with its
gallant ships and hardy seamen.

He had a dim
recollection of ladies in a blue and white boat, and a tall man in a
red silken jacket, who stood in the bow with an oar.

Before the soup, a grace was read by an old man with blue hands--he
was a dyer.

When they had again eaten--and Worse had not had such an appetite for
many a day--they took their steaming tumblers of toddy to the open
window, and the blue smoke of their pipes came puffing out like
cannon shots, first from the one and then from the other, like two
frigates saluting.

With his florid cheek, his compact
figure smartly arrayed in a bright-buttoned blue coat, his brisk
and vigorous step, and his hale and hearty aspect, altogether he
seemed--not young, indeed--but a kind of new contrivance of
Mother Nature in the shape of man, whom age and infirmity had no
business to touch.

Sometimes a light glimmered out of the physician's eyes, burning
blue and ominous, like the reflection of a furnace, or, let us
say, like one of those gleams of ghastly fire that darted from
Bunyan's awful doorway in the hillside, and quivered on the
pilgrim's face.

but could you tell
me which of those men killed him for me?” [1] Giovanni said, yes, that
it was a man who had a big two-handed sword, with a blue feather in his
bonnet.

All this chattering grew irksome to me; and since I still felt strongly
agitated, I rose at last from table, saying that I wanted to go and get
new clothes of blue silk and stuff for him and me; adding that I meant
to walk in procession after four days at the feast of Our Lady, and
meant Cencio to carry a white lighted torch on the occasion.

Accordingly
I took my leave, and had the blue cloth cut, together with a handsome
jacket of blue sarcenet and a little doublet of the same; and I had a
similar jacket and waistcoat made for Cencio.

It happened on one occasion that
Ascanio, who came twice a day to visit me, asked to have a jacket cut
out for him from a blue silk vest of mine I never used.

The storm
raged for some while, but at last it stopped; and we, who were pounded
black and blue, scrambled as well as we could upon our horses.

"And so we may arrive by Talmud skill,
  And profane Greek, to raise the building up
  Of Helen's house against the Ismaelite,
  King of Thogarma, and his habergions
  Brimstony, blue, and fiery; and the force
  Of king Abaddon, and the beast of Cittim:
  Which rabbi David Kimchi, Onkelos,
  And Aben Ezra do interpret Rome."

BLUE, colour of servants' livery, hence "--order,"
"--waiters."

WATCHET, pale, sky blue.

In the fullness
of their revelry, they fluttered, chirping and frolicking from bush to
bush, and tree to tree, capricious from the very profusion and variety
around them. There was the honest cock robin, the favorite game of
stripling sportsmen, with its loud querulous note; and the twittering
blackbirds flying in sable clouds; and the golden-winged woodpecker with
his crimson crest, his broad black gorget, and splendid plumage; and the
cedar bird, with its red-tipt wings and yellow-tipt tail and its little
monteiro cap of feathers; and the blue jay, that noisy coxcomb, in his
gay light blue coat and white underclothes, screaming and chattering,
nodding and bobbing and bowing, and pretending to be on good terms with
every songster of the grove.

The sun
gradually wheeled his broad disk down in the west. The wide bosom of the
Tappan Zee lay motionless and glassy, excepting that here and there a
gentle undulation waved and prolonged the blue shadow of the distant
mountain.

A few amber clouds floated in the sky, without a breath of air
to move them. The horizon was of a fine golden tint, changing gradually
into a pure apple green, and from that into the deep blue of the
mid-heaven.

Old farmers, a spare leathern-faced race, in homespun
coats and breeches, blue stockings, huge shoes, and magnificent pewter
buckles.

There was the story of Doffue Martling, a large blue-bearded Dutchman,
who had nearly taken a British frigate with an old iron nine-pounder
from a mud breastwork, only that his gun burst at the sixth discharge.

A gentle slope descends from it to a silver sheet
of water, bordered by high trees, between which, peeps may be caught at
the blue hills of the Hudson.

They were so far off
as to be of a deep blue color, and in a few hours we sank them in
the northeast. These were the Falkland Islands.

You wait till you've been to sea as long as I
have, and den you'll know.''

CHAPTER VII

We continued sailing along with a fair wind and fine weather until--

Tuesday, November 25th, when at daylight we saw the island of Juan
Fernandez directly ahead, rising like a deep blue cloud out of the
sea.

We were then probably nearly seventy miles from it; and so
high and so blue did it appear that I mistook it for a cloud
resting over the island, and looked for the island under it, until
it gradually turned to a deader and greener color, and I could
mark the inequalities upon its surface.

The
gente de razon, or better sort of people, wear cloaks of black or
dark blue broadcloth, with as much velvet and trimmings as may be;
and from this they go down to the blanket of the Indian, the
middle classes wearing a poncho, something like a large square
cloth, with a hole in the middle for the head to go through.

Take him with his
well-varnished black tarpaulin, stuck upon the back of his head,
his long locks coming down almost into his eyes, his white duck
trousers and shirt, blue jacket, and black kerchief, tied loosely
round his neck, and he was a fine specimen of manly beauty.

Being
forewarned of this before I went to sea, I took no ``long togs''
with me; and being dressed like the rest, in white duck trousers,
blue jacket, and straw hat, which would prevent my going into
better company, and showing no disposition to avoid them, I set
all suspicion at rest. Our crew fell in with some who belonged to
the other vessels, and, sailor-like, steered for the first
grog-shop.

Several blue jackets were reeling about among
the houses, which showed that the pulperías had been well
patronized.

Our liberty had now
truly taken flight, and with it we laid away our pumps, stockings,
blue jackets, neckerchiefs, and other go-ashore paraphernalia, and
putting on old duck trousers, red shirts, and Scotch caps, began
taking out and landing our hides.

Soon after breakfast, a large boat, filled with men in
blue jackets, scarlet caps, and various-colored under-clothes,
bound ashore on liberty, left the Italian ship, and passed under
our stern, the men singing beautiful Italian boat-songs all the
way, in fine, full chorus.

Though it was by no means cold weather (we having on only our red
shirts and duck trousers), they all had on woollen trousers,-- not
blue and ship-shape, but of all colors,-- brown, drab, gray, aye,
and green,-- with suspenders over their shoulders, and pockets to
put their hands in.

The stars, too, came out of
the blue one after another, night after night, unobscured, and
twinkled as clear as on a still, frosty night at home, until the
day came upon them. All this time the sea was rolling in immense
surges, white with foam, as far as the eye could reach, on every
side, for we were now leagues and leagues from shore.

The usual outfit of pumps,
white stockings, loose white duck trousers, blue jackets, clean
checked shirts, black kerchiefs, hats well varnished, with a
fathom of black ribbon over the left eye, a silk handkerchief
flying from the outside jacket pocket, and four or five dollars
tied up in the back of the neckerchief, and we were ``all right.''
One of the quarter-boats pulled us ashore, and we streamed up to
the town.

The Cape Cod boy, Nat, put in his
double-fisters, starting the blood, and bringing the
black-and-blue spots all over the face and arms of the other, whom
we expected to see give in every moment; but, the more he was
hurt, the better he fought.

I stood on
the forecastle, looking at the seas, which were rolling high, as
far as the eye could reach, their tops white with foam, and the
body of them of a deep indigo blue, reflecting the bright rays of
the sun.

you're always hanging out blue lights!

As far as the eye could reach, the sea in every direction
was of a deep blue color, the waves running high and fresh, and
sparkling in the light, and in the midst lay this immense
mountain-island, its cavities and valleys thrown into deep shade,
and its points and pinnacles glittering in the sun.

The main
body of the mass was, as I have said, of an indigo color, its base
crusted with frozen foam; and as it grew thin and transparent
toward the edges and top, its color shaded off from a deep blue to
the whiteness of snow.

The sun was out bright, the sea of a deep blue, fringed with the
white foam of the waves, which ran high before a strong
southwester; our solitary ship tore on through the open water as
though glad to be out of her confinement; and the ice islands lay
scattered here and there, of various sizes and shapes, reflecting
the bright rays of the sun, and drifting slowly northward before
the gale.

In this little, wet, leaky hole,
we were all quartered, in an atmosphere so bad that our lamp,
which swung in the middle from the beams, sometimes actually
burned blue, with a large circle of foul air about it.

The sea was as still as an inland lake; the light trade-wind was
gently and steadily breathing from astern; the dark blue sky was
studded with the tropical stars; there was no sound but the
rippling of the water under the stem; and the sails were spread
out, wide and high,-- the two lower studding-sails stretching on
each side far beyond the deck; the topmast studding-sails like
wings to the topsails; the top-gallant studding-sails spreading
fearlessly out above them; still higher, the two royal
studding-sails, looking like two kites flying from the same
string; and, highest of all, the little skysail, the apex of the
pyramid, seeming actually to touch the stars, and to be out of
reach of human hand.

It was a beautiful
day, the sea hardly ruffled by the light trades, and the island
looking like a small blue mound rising from a field of glass.

On Monday morning, the increased depth and
dark-blue color of the water, and the mixture of shells and white
sand which we brought up, upon sounding, showed that we were in
the channel, and nearing George's; accordingly, the ship's head
was put directly to the northward, and we stood on, with perfect
confidence in the soundings, though we had not taken an
observation for two days, nor seen land; and the difference of an
eighth of a mile out of the way might put us ashore.

There is the old white Mission with its
belfries, and there the town, with its one-story adobe houses,
with here and there a two-story wooden house of later build; yet
little is it altered,-- the same repose in the golden sunlight and
glorious climate, sheltered by its hills; and then, more remindful
than anything else, there roars and tumbles upon the beach the
same grand surf of the great Pacific as on the beautiful day when
the Pilgrim, after her five months' voyage, dropped her weary
anchors here; the same bright blue ocean, and the surf making just
the same monotonous, melancholy roar, and the same dreamy town,
and gleaming white Mission, as when we beached our boats for the
first time, riding over the breakers with shouting Kanakas, the
three small hide-traders lying at anchor in the offing.

After a rest
there, we went on to Clark's Camp and the Big Trees, where I
measured one tree ninety-seven feet in circumference without its
bark, and the bark is usually eighteen inches thick; and rode
through another which lay on the ground, a shell, with all the
insides out,-- rode through it mounted, and sitting at full height
in the saddle; then to the wonderful Yo Semite Valley,-- itself a
stupendous miracle of nature, with its Dome, its Capitan, its
walls of three thousand feet of perpendicular height,-- but a
valley of streams, of waterfalls, from the torrent to the mere
shimmer of a bridal veil, only enough to reflect a rainbow, with
their plunges of twenty-five hundred feet, or their smaller falls
of eight hundred, with nothing at the base but thick mists, which
form and trickle, and then run and at last plunge into the blue
Merced that flows through the centre of the valley.

As the shores
of California faded in the distance, and the summits of the Coast
Range sank under the blue horizon, I bade farewell-- yes, I do not
doubt, forever-- to those scenes which, however changed or
unchanged, must always possess an ineffable interest for me.

Entering the front room, I heard my name called from amid a group
of blue-jackets, and several sunburned, tar-colored men came
forward to speak to me.

He was six feet tall, a
handsome man of striking appearance, with blue eyes, nearly white
hair, a ruddy countenance, and a very straight figure for one of
nearly eighty years of age.

Doth it not follow from this, that though I see one part of the
sky red, and another blue, and that my reason doth thence evidently
conclude there must be some cause of that diversity of colours, yet that
cause cannot be said to be a sensible thing, or perceived by the sense of
seeing?

Add to these the experiment of a prism
which, separating the heterogeneous rays of light, alters the colour of
any object, and will cause the whitest to appear of a deep blue or red to
the naked eye.

I tell you, Philonous, external light is nothing but a thin fluid
substance, whose minute particles being agitated with a brisk motion, and
in various manners reflected from the different surfaces of outward
objects to the eyes, communicate different motions to the optic nerves;
which, being propagated to the brain, cause therein various impressions;
and these are attended with the sensations of red, blue, yellow, &c.

It is not my business to dispute about THEM; only I would
advise you to bethink yourself, whether, considering the inquiry we are
upon, it be prudent for you to affirm--THE RED AND BLUE WHICH WE SEE ARE
NOT REAL COLOURS, BUT CERTAIN UNKNOWN MOTIONS AND FIGURES WHICH NO MAN
EVER DID OR CAN SEE ARE TRULY SO.

Remember I say, that it is not any object which is hard or soft,
hot or cold, blue or white, round or square, &c.

One pale as yonder wan and horned moon,
With lips of lurid blue,
The other glowing like the vital morn,                               _5
When throned on ocean's wave
It breathes over the world:
Yet both so passing strange and wonderful!

Her dewy eyes are closed;
On their translucent lids, whose texture fine                        _40
Scarce hides the dark blue orbs that burn below
With unapparent fire,
The baby Sleep is pillowed:
Her golden tresses shade
The bosom's stainless pride,                                         _45
Twining like tendrils of the parasite
Around a marble column.

The magic car moved on;
The night was fair, innumerable stars
Studded heaven's dark blue vault;                                    _120
The eastern wave grew pale
With the first smile of morn.

_405
Man, where the gloom of the long polar night
Lowered o'er the snow-clad rocks and frozen soil,
Where scarce the hardiest herb that braves the frost
Basked in the moonlight's ineffectual glow,
Shrank with the plants, and darkened with the night;                 _410
Nor where the tropics bound the realms of day
With a broad belt of mingling cloud and flame,
Where blue mists through the unmoving atmosphere
Scattered the seeds of pestilence, and fed
Unnatural vegetation, where the land                                 _415
Teemed with all earthquake, tempest and disease,
Was man a nobler being; slavery
Had crushed him to his country's blood-stained dust.

Even where the milder zone afforded man
A seeming shelter, yet contagion there,                              _420
Blighting his being with unnumbered ills,
Spread like a quenchless fire; nor truth availed
Till late to arrest its progress, or create
That peace which first in bloodless victory waved
Her snowy standard o'er this favoured clime:                         _425
There man was long the train-bearer of slaves,
The mimic of surrounding misery,
The jackal of ambition's lion-rage,
The bloodhound of religion's hungry zeal.

The Body and the Soul united then,                                   _615
A gentle start convulsed Ianthe's frame:
Her veiny eyelids quietly unclosed;
Moveless awhile the dark blue orbs remained:
She looked around in wonder and beheld
Henry, who kneeled in silence by her couch,                          _620
Watching her sleep with looks of speechless love,
And the bright beaming stars
That through the casement shone.

Roused by the shock he started from his trance--
The cold white light of morning, the blue moon
Low in the west, the clear and garish hills,
The distinct valley and the vacant woods,                            _195
Spread round him where he stood.

Does the bright arch of rainbow clouds
And pendent mountains seen in the calm lake,
Lead only to a black and watery depth,                               _215
While death's blue vault, with loathliest vapours hung,
Where every shade which the foul grave exhales
Hides its dead eye from the detested day,
Conducts, O Sleep, to thy delightful realms?

Like restless serpents, clothed
In rainbow and in fire, the parasites,
Starred with ten thousand blossoms, flow around                      _440
The grey trunks, and, as gamesome infants' eyes,
With gentle meanings, and most innocent wiles,
Fold their beams round the hearts of those that love,
These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs
Uniting their close union; the woven leaves                          _445
Make net-work of the dark blue light of day,
And the night's noontide clearness, mutable
As shapes in the weird clouds.

where the pass expands                       _550
Its stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks,
And seems, with its accumulated crags,
To overhang the world: for wide expand
Beneath the wan stars and descending moon
Islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams,                       _555
Dim tracts and vast, robed in the lustrous gloom
Of leaden-coloured even, and fiery hills
Mingling their flames with twilight, on the verge
Of the remote horizon.

One step,
One human step alone, has ever broken
The stillness of its solitude:--one voice                            _590
Alone inspired its echoes;--even that voice
Which hither came, floating among the winds,
And led the loveliest among human forms
To make their wild haunts the depository
Of all the grace and beauty that endued                              _595
Its motions, render up its majesty,
Scatter its music on the unfeeling storm,
And to the damp leaves and blue cavern mould,
Nurses of rainbow flowers and branching moss,
Commit the colours of that varying cheek,                            _600
That snowy breast, those dark and drooping eyes.

For, where the irresistible storm had cloven
That fearful darkness, the blue sky was seen                         _155
Fretted with many a fair cloud interwoven
Most delicately, and the ocean green,
Beneath that opening spot of blue serene,
Quivered like burning emerald; calm was spread
On all below; but far on high, between                               _160
Earth and the upper air, the vast clouds fled,
Countless and swift as leaves on autumn's tempest shed.

For ever, as the war became more fierce
Between the whirlwinds and the rack on high,
That spot grew more serene; blue light did pierce                    _165
The woof of those white clouds, which seem to lie
Far, deep, and motionless; while through the sky
The pallid semicircle of the moon
Passed on, in slow and moving majesty;
Its upper horn arrayed in mists, which soon                          _170
But slowly fled, like dew beneath the beams of noon.

I could not choose but gaze; a fascination
Dwelt in that moon, and sky, and clouds, which drew
My fancy thither, and in expectation
Of what I knew not, I remained:--the hue                             _175
Of the white moon, amid that heaven so blue,
Suddenly stained with shadow did appear;
A speck, a cloud, a shape, approaching grew,
Like a great ship in the sun's sinking sphere
Beheld afar at sea, and swift it came anear.

_555
Ethereal mountains shone around--a Fane
Stood in the midst, girt by green isles which lay
On the blue sunny deep, resplendent far away.

Wonder and joy a passing faintness threw                             _640
Over my brow--a hand supported me,
Whose touch was magic strength; an eye of blue
Looked into mine, like moonlight, soothingly;
And a voice said:--'Thou must a listener be
This day--two mighty Spirits now return,                             _645
Like birds of calm, from the world's raging sea,
They pour fresh light from Hope's immortal urn;
A tale of human power--despair not--list and learn!

She moved upon this earth a shape of brightness,                     _865
A power, that from its objects scarcely drew
One impulse of her being--in her lightness
Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew,
Which wanders through the waste air's pathless blue,
To nourish some far desert; she did seem                             _870
Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew,
Like the bright shade of some immortal dream
Which walks, when tempest sleeps, the wave of life's dark stream.

24.

'We part to meet again--but yon blue waste,                          _1090
Yon desert wide and deep, holds no recess,
Within whose happy silence, thus embraced
We might survive all ills in one caress:
Nor doth the grave--I fear 'tis passionless--
Nor yon cold vacant Heaven:--we meet again                           _1095
Within the minds of men, whose lips shall bless
Our memory, and whose hopes its light retain
When these dissevered bones are trodden in the plain.'

A woman's shape, now lank and cold and blue,
The dwelling of the many-coloured worm,
Hung there; the white and hollow cheek I drew                        _1335
To my dry lips--what radiance did inform
Those horny eyes?

She stood beside him like a rainbow braided
Within some storm, when scarce its shadows vast
From the blue paths of the swift sun have faded;
A sweet and solemn smile, like Cythna's, cast                        _1930
One moment's light, which made my heart beat fast,
O'er that child's parted lips--a gleam of bliss,
A shade of vanished days,--as the tears passed
Which wrapped it, even as with a father's kiss
I pressed those softest eyes in trembling tenderness.

To see, far glancing in the misty morning,
The signs of that innumerable host;
To hear one sound of many made, the warning
Of Earth to Heaven from its free children tossed,                    _2065
While the eternal hills, and the sea lost
In wavering light, and, starring the blue sky
The city's myriad spires of gold, almost
With human joy made mute society--
Its witnesses with men who must hereafter be.

Her voice was as a mountain stream which sweeps
The withered leaves of Autumn to the lake,
And in some deep and narrow bay then sleeps
In the shadow of the shores; as dead leaves wake,
Under the wave, in flowers and herbs which make                      _2285
Those green depths beautiful when skies are blue,
The multitude so moveless did partake
Such living change, and kindling murmurs flew
As o'er that speechless calm delight and wonder grew.

Had found a voice--and ere that voice did pass,
The night grew damp and dim, and, through a rent                     _2615
Of the ruin where we sate, from the morass
A wandering Meteor by some wild wind sent,
Hung high in the green dome, to which it lent
A faint and pallid lustre; while the song
Of blasts, in which its blue hair quivering bent,                    _2620
Strewed strangest sounds the moving leaves among;
A wondrous light, the sound as of a spirit's tongue.

No living thing was there beside one woman,
Whom I found wandering in the streets, and she
Was withered from a likeness of aught human                          _2760
Into a fiend, by some strange misery:
Soon as she heard my steps she leaped on me,
And glued her burning lips to mine, and laughed
With a loud, long, and frantic laugh of glee,
And cried, 'Now, Mortal, thou hast deeply quaffed                    _2765
The Plague's blue kisses--soon millions shall pledge the draught!

They bore her to a bark, and the swift stroke
Of silent rowers clove the blue moonlight seas,
Until upon their path the morning broke;
They anchored then, where, be there calm or breeze,                  _2905
The gloomiest of the drear Symplegades
Shakes with the sleepless surge;--the Ethiop there
Wound his long arms around her, and with knees
Like iron clasped her feet, and plunged with her
Among the closing waves out of the boundless air.

'The misery of a madness slow and creeping,
Which made the earth seem fire, the sea seem air,
And the white clouds of noon which oft were sleeping,
In the blue heaven so beautiful and fair,
Like hosts of ghastly shadows hovering there;                        _2960
And the sea-eagle looked a fiend, who bore
Thy mangled limbs for food!--Thus all things were
Transformed into the agony which I wore
Even as a poisoned robe around my bosom's core.

'That night we anchored in a woody bay,
And sleep no more around us dared to hover                           _3470
Than, when all doubt and fear has passed away,
It shades the couch of some unresting lover,
Whose heart is now at rest: thus night passed over
In mutual joy:--around, a forest grew
Of poplars and dark oaks, whose shade did cover                      _3475
The waning stars pranked in the waters blue,
And trembled in the wind which from the morning flew.

'The many ships spotting the dark blue deep
With snowy sails, fled fast as ours came nigh,
In fear and wonder; and on every steep
Thousands did gaze, they heard the startling cry,                    _3490
Like Earth's own voice lifted unconquerably
To all her children, the unbounded mirth,
The glorious joy of thy name--Liberty!

So spake the hypocrites, who cursed and lied;                        _3605
Alas, their sway was past, and tears and laughter
Clung to their hoary hair, withering the pride
Which in their hollow hearts dared still abide;
And yet obscener slaves with smoother brow,
And sneers on their strait lips, thin, blue and wide,                _3610
Said that the rule of men was over now,
And hence, the subject world to woman's will must bow;

17.

Then fell blue Plague upon the race of man.

A cloud was hanging o'er the western mountains;
Before its blue and moveless depth were flying                       _4235
Gray mists poured forth from the unresting fountains
Of darkness in the North:--the day was dying:--
Sudden, the sun shone forth, its beams were lying
Like boiling gold on Ocean, strange to see,
And on the shattered vapours, which defying                          _4240
The power of light in vain, tossed restlessly
In the red Heaven, like wrecks in a tempestuous sea.

Alas, ye deem
Falsely--'tis but a crowd of maniacs stark
Driven, like a troop of spectres, through the dark,
From the choked well, whence a bright death-fire sprung,
A lurid earth-star, which dropped many a spark                       _4330
From its blue train, and spreading widely, clung
To their wild hair, like mist the topmost pines among.

Then the bright child, the plumed Seraph came,
And fixed its blue and beaming eyes on mine,
And said, 'I was disturbed by tremulous shame
When once we met, yet knew that I was thine                          _4660
From the same hour in which thy lips divine
Kindled a clinging dream within my brain,
Which ever waked when I might sleep, to twine
Thine image with HER memory dear--again
We meet; exempted now from mortal fear or pain.

and happy souls,                              _280
Ere from thy vine the leaves of autumn fall,

Catch thee, and feed from their o'erflowing bowls
Thousands who thirst for thine ambrosial dew;--
Thou art the radiance which where ocean rolls

Investeth it; and when the heavens are blue                          _285
Thou fillest them; and when the earth is fair
The shadow of thy moving wings imbue

Its deserts and its mountains, till they wear
Beauty like some light robe;--thou ever soarest
Among the towers of men, and as soft air                             _290

In spring, which moves the unawakened forest,
Clothing with leaves its branches bare and bleak,
Thou floatest among men; and aye implorest

That which from thee they should implore:--the weak
Alone kneel to thee, offering up the hearts                          _295
The strong have broken--yet where shall any seek

A garment whom thou clothest not?

Talk with me                                      _20
Of that our land, whose wilds and floods,
Barren and dark although they be,
Were dearer than these chestnut woods:
Those heathy paths, that inland stream,
And the blue mountains, shapes which seem                            _25
Like wrecks of childhood's sunny dream:
Which that we have abandoned now,
Weighs on the heart like that remorse
Which altered friendship leaves.

The snake,
The pale snake, that with eager breath
Creeps here his noontide thirst to slake,                            _115
Is beaming with many a mingled hue,
Shed from yon dome's eternal blue,
When he floats on that dark and lucid flood
In the light of his own loveliness;
And the birds that in the fountain dip                               _120
Their plumes, with fearless fellowship
Above and round him wheel and hover.

Duly each evening from her home,
With her fair child would Helen come
To sit upon that antique seat,
While the hues of day were pale;                                     _175
And the bright boy beside her feet
Now lay, lifting at intervals
His broad blue eyes on her;
Now, where some sudden impulse calls
Following.

So thro' the long long streets we passed
Of the million-peopled City vast;                                    _945
Which is that desert, where each one
Seeks his mate yet is alone,
Beloved and sought and mourned of none;
Until the clear blue sky was seen,
And the grassy meadows bright and green,                             _950
And then I sunk in his embrace,
Enclosing there a mighty space
Of love: and so we travelled on
By woods, and fields of yellow flowers,
And towns, and villages, and towers,                                 _955
Day after day of happy hours.

And with these words they rose, and towards the flood
Of the blue lake, beneath the leaves now wind
With equal steps and fingers intertwined:
Thence to a lonely dwelling, where the shore                         _1245
Is shadowed with steep rocks, and cypresses
Cleave with their dark green cones the silent skies,
And with their shadows the clear depths below,
And where a little terrace from its bowers,
Of blooming myrtle and faint lemon-flowers,                          _1250
Scatters its sense-dissolving fragrance o'er
The liquid marble of the windless lake;
And where the aged forest's limbs look hoar,
Under the leaves which their green garments make,
They come: 'Tis Helen's home, and clean and white,                   _1255
Like one which tyrants spare on our own land
In some such solitude, its casements bright
Shone through their vine-leaves in the morning sun,
And even within 'twas scarce like Italy.

I love all waste
And solitary places; where we taste                                  _15
The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be:
And such was this wide ocean, and this shore
More barren than its billows; and yet more
Than all, with a remembered friend I love                            _20
To ride as then I rode;--for the winds drove
The living spray along the sunny air
Into our faces; the blue heavens were bare,
Stripped to their depths by the awakening north;
And, from the waves, sound like delight broke forth                  _25
Harmonising with solitude, and sent
Into our hearts aereal merriment.

The
bright blue sky of Rome, and the effect of the vigorous awakening
spring in that divinest climate, and the new life with which it
drenches the spirits even to intoxication, were the inspiration of
this drama.

Then, see those million worlds which burn and roll
Around us: their inhabitants beheld
My sphered light wane in wide Heaven; the sea                        _165
Was lifted by strange tempest, and new fire
From earthquake-rifted mountains of bright snow
Shook its portentous hair beneath Heaven's frown;
Lightning and Inundation vexed the plains;
Blue thistles bloomed in cities; foodless toads                      _170
Within voluptuous chambers panting crawled:
When Plague had fallen on man, and beast, and worm,
And Famine; and black blight on herb and tree;
And in the corn, and vines, and meadow-grass,
Teemed ineradicable poisonous weeds                                  _175
Draining their growth, for my wan breast was dry
With grief; and the thin air, my breath, was stained
With the contagion of a mother's hate
Breathed on her child's destroyer; ay, I heard
Thy curse, the which, if thou rememberest not,                       _180
Yet my innumerable seas and streams,
Mountains, and caves, and winds, and yon wide air,
And the inarticulate people of the dead,
Preserve, a treasured spell.

PANTHEA:
Look, sister, where a troop of spirits gather,
Like flocks of clouds in spring's delightful weather,                _665
Thronging in the blue air!

ASIA:
Thine eyes are like the deep, blue, boundless heaven
Contracted to two circles underneath                                 _115
Their long, fine lashes; dark, far, measureless,
Orb within orb, and line through line inwoven.

Methought
As we sate here, the flower-infolding buds
Burst on yon lightning-blasted almond tree,                          _135
When swift from the white Scythian wilderness
A wind swept forth wrinkling the Earth with frost:
I looked, and all the blossoms were blown down;
But on each leaf was stamped, as the blue bells
Of Hyacinth tell Apollo's written grief,                             _140
O, FOLLOW, FOLLOW!

SEMICHORUS 1 OF SPIRITS:
The path through which that lovely twain
Have passed, by cedar, pine, and yew,
And each dark tree that ever grew,
Is curtained out from Heaven's wide blue;
Nor sun, nor moon, nor wind, nor rain,                               _5
Can pierce its interwoven bowers,
Nor aught, save where some cloud of dew,
Drifted along the earth-creeping breeze,
Between the trunks of the hoar trees,
Hangs each a pearl in the pale flowers                               _10
Of the green laurel, blown anew,
And bends, and then fades silently,
One frail and fair anemone:
Or when some star of many a one
That climbs and wanders through steep night,                         _15
Has found the cleft through which alone
Beams fall from high those depths upon
Ere it is borne away, away,
By the swift Heavens that cannot stay,
It scatters drops of golden light,                                   _20
Like lines of rain that ne'er unite:
And the gloom divine is all around,
And underneath is the mossy ground.

Cities then
Were built, and through their snow-like columns flowed               _95
The warm winds, and the azure ether shone,
And the blue sea and shadowy hills were seen.

OCEAN:
Henceforth the fields of heaven-reflecting sea
Which are my realm, will heave, unstained with blood,
Beneath the uplifting winds, like plains of corn                     _20
Swayed by the summer air; my streams will flow
Round many-peopled continents, and round
Fortunate isles; and from their glassy thrones
Blue Proteus and his humid nymphs shall mark
The shadow of fair ships, as mortals see                             _25
The floating bark of the light-laden moon
With that white star, its sightless pilot's crest,
Borne down the rapid sunset's ebbing sea;
Tracking their path no more by blood and groans,
And desolation, and the mingled voice                                _30
Of slavery and command; but by the light
Of wave-reflected flowers, and floating odours,
And music soft, and mild, free, gentle voices,
And sweetest music, such as spirits love.

Death is the veil which those who live call life:
They sleep, and it is lifted: and meanwhile
In mild variety the seasons mild                                     _115
With rainbow-skirted showers, and odorous winds,
And long blue meteors cleansing the dull night,
And the life-kindling shafts of the keen sun's
All-piercing bow, and the dew-mingled rain
Of the calm moonbeams, a soft influence mild,                        _120
Shall clothe the forests and the fields, ay, even
The crag-built deserts of the barren deep,
With ever-living leaves, and fruits, and flowers.

For the sun, their swift shepherd,
To their folds them compelling,
In the depths of the dawn,
Hastes, in meteor-eclipsing array, and the flee                      _5
Beyond his blue dwelling,
As fawns flee the leopard.

As shades are chased,
Trembling, by day, from heaven's blue waste.

_295
The wrecks beside of many a city vast,
Whose population which the earth grew over
Was mortal, but not human; see, they lie,
Their monstrous works, and uncouth skeletons,
Their statues, homes and fanes; prodigious shapes                    _300
Huddled in gray annihilation, split,
Jammed in the hard, black deep; and over these,
The anatomies of unknown winged things,
And fishes which were isles of living scale,
And serpents, bony chains, twisted around                            _305
The iron crags, or within heaps of dust
To which the tortuous strength of their last pangs
Had crushed the iron crags; and over these
The jagged alligator, and the might
Of earth-convulsing behemoth, which once                             _310
Were monarch beasts, and on the slimy shores,
And weed-overgrown continents of earth,
Increased and multiplied like summer worms
On an abandoned corpse, till the blue globe
Wrapped deluge round it like a cloak, and they                       _315
Yelled, gasped, and were abolished; or some God
Whose throne was in a comet, passed, and cried,
'Be not!'

_430

THE EARTH:
As the dissolving warmth of dawn may fold
A half unfrozen dew-globe, green, and gold,
And crystalline, till it becomes a winged mist,
And wanders up the vault of the blue day,
Outlives the noon, and on the sun's last ray                         _435
Hangs o'er the sea, a fleece of fire and amethyst.

NOTE:
_432 unfrozen B, edition 1839; infrozen 1820.

The beautiful blue heaven is flecked with blood!

Speak now                    _45
The thing you surely know, which is that you,
If your fine frame were stretched upon that wheel,
And you were told: 'Confess that you did poison
Your little nephew; that fair blue-eyed child
Who was the lodestar of your life:'--and though                      _50
All see, since his most swift and piteous death,
That day and night, and heaven and earth, and time,
And all the things hoped for or done therein
Are changed to you, through your exceeding grief,
Yet you would say, 'I confess anything:'                             _55
And beg from your tormentors, like that slave,
The refuge of dishonourable death.

CAMILLO:
I would as soon have tortured mine own nephew
(If he now lived he would be just her age;
His hair, too, was her colour, and his eyes                          _65
Like hers in shape, but blue and not so deep)
As that most perfect image of God's love
That ever came sorrowing upon the earth.

(Such feelings haunted him when, in "The Cenci", he
makes Beatrice speak to Cardinal Camillo of

'that fair blue-eyed child
Who was the lodestar of your life:'--and say--
All see, since his most swift and piteous death,
That day and night, and heaven and earth, and time,
And all the things hoped for or done therein
Are changed to you, through your exceeding grief.')

Some friends of ours were residing in the neighbourhood of Leghorn,
and we took a small house, Villa Valsovano, about half-way between the
town and Monte Nero, where we remained during the summer.

'Let the blue sky overhead,
The green earth on which ye tread,
All that must eternal be
Witness the solemnity.

_65
This quicksilver no gnome has drunk--within
The walnut bowl it lies, veined and thin,
In colour like the wake of light that stains
The Tuscan deep, when from the moist moon rains
The inmost shower of its white fire--the breeze                      _70
Is still--blue Heaven smiles over the pale seas.

And in this bowl of quicksilver--for I
Yield to the impulse of an infancy
Outlasting manhood--I have made to float
A rude idealism of a paper boat:--                                   _75
A hollow screw with cogs--Henry will know
The thing I mean and laugh at me,--if so
He fears not I should do more mischief.--Next
Lie bills and calculations much perplexed,
With steam-boats, frigates, and machinery quaint                     _80
Traced over them in blue and yellow paint.

But I, an old diviner, who knew well                                 _140
Every false verse of that sweet oracle,
Turned to the sad enchantress once again,
And sought a respite from my gentle pain,
In citing every passage o'er and o'er
Of our communion--how on the sea-shore                               _145
We watched the ocean and the sky together,
Under the roof of blue Italian weather;
How I ran home through last year's thunder-storm,
And felt the transverse lightning linger warm
Upon my cheek--and how we often made                                 _150
Feasts for each other, where good will outweighed
The frugal luxury of our country cheer,
As well it might, were it less firm and clear
Than ours must ever be;--and how we spun
A shroud of talk to hide us from the sun                             _155
Of this familiar life, which seems to be
But is not:--or is but quaint mockery
Of all we would believe, and sadly blame
The jarring and inexplicable frame
Of this wrong world:--and then anatomize                             _160
The purposes and thoughts of men whose eyes
Were closed in distant years;--or widely guess
The issue of the earth's great business,
When we shall be as we no longer are--
Like babbling gossips safe, who hear the war                         _165
Of winds, and sigh, but tremble not;--or how
You listened to some interrupted flow
Of visionary rhyme,--in joy and pain
Struck from the inmost fountains of my brain,
With little skill perhaps;--or how we sought                         _170
Those deepest wells of passion or of thought
Wrought by wise poets in the waste of years,
Staining their sacred waters with our tears;
Quenching a thirst ever to be renewed!

_255
There,--One, whose voice was venomed melody
Sate by a well, under blue nightshade bowers:
The breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers,
Her touch was as electric poison,--flame
Out of her looks into my vitals came,                                _260
And from her living cheeks and bosom flew
A killing air, which pierced like honey-dew
Into the core of my green heart, and lay
Upon its leaves; until, as hair grown gray
O'er a young brow, they hid its unblown prime                        _265
With ruins of unseasonable time.

The blue Aegean girds this chosen home,                              _430
With ever-changing sound and light and foam,
Kissing the sifted sands, and caverns hoar;
And all the winds wandering along the shore
Undulate with the undulating tide:
There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide;                      _435
And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond,
As clear as elemental diamond,
Or serene morning air; and far beyond,
The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer
(Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year)                    _440
Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls
Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls
Illumining, with sound that never fails
Accompany the noonday nightingales;
And all the place is peopled with sweet airs;                        _445
The light clear element which the isle wears
Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers,
Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers.

And every motion, odour, beam and tone,
With that deep music is in unison:
Which is a soul within the soul--they seem                           _455
Like echoes of an antenatal dream.--
It is an isle 'twixt Heaven, Air, Earth, and Sea,
Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity;
Bright as that wandering Eden Lucifer,
Washed by the soft blue Oceans of young air.

Veil after veil, each hiding some delight,
Which Sun or Moon or zephyr draw aside,
Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride
Glowing at once with love and loveliness,                            _475
Blushes and trembles at its own excess:
Yet, like a buried lamp, a Soul no less
Burns in the heart of this delicious isle,
An atom of th' Eternal, whose own smile
Unfolds itself, and may be felt, not seen                            _480
O'er the gray rocks, blue waves, and forests green,
Filling their bare and void interstices.--
But the chief marvel of the wilderness
Is a lone dwelling, built by whom or how
None of the rustic island-people know:                               _485
'Tis not a tower of strength, though with its height
It overtops the woods; but, for delight,
Some wise and tender Ocean-King, ere crime
Had been invented, in the world's young prime,
Reared it, a wonder of that simple time,                             _490
An envy of the isles, a pleasure-house
Made sacred to his sister and his spouse.

Meanwhile                               _540
We two will rise, and sit, and walk together,
Under the roof of blue Ionian weather,
And wander in the meadows, or ascend
The mossy mountains, where the blue heavens bend
With lightest winds, to touch their paramour;                        _545
Or linger, where the pebble-paven shore,
Under the quick, faint kisses of the sea
Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy,--
Possessing and possessed by all that is
Within that calm circumference of bliss,                             _550
And by each other, till to love and live
Be one:--or, at the noontide hour, arrive
Where some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep
The moonlight of the expired night asleep,
Through which the awakened day can never peep;                       _555
A veil for our seclusion, close as night's,
Where secure sleep may kill thine innocent lights:
Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain
Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again.

Haste, while the vault of blue Italian day
Is yet his fitting charnel-roof!

As long as skies are blue, and fields are green,
Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,
Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.

His head was bound with pansies overblown,
And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue;                        _290
And a light spear topped with a cypress cone,
Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew
Yet dripping with the forest's noonday dew,
Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart
Shook the weak hand that grasped it; of that crew                    _295
He came the last, neglected and apart;
A herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter's dart.

eclipse
The armies of the golden stars, each one
Pavilioned in its tent of light--all strewn
Over the chasms of blue night--

***


HELLAS

A LYRICAL DRAMA.

In the blue glow of hyaline
Golden worlds revolve and shine.

Bask in the deep blue noon divine.

NOTE:
_657 the deep blue "Errata", Wms. transcript; the blue edition 1822.

I dare not ask her if there stood upon it                            _90
A pleasure-dome surmounted by a crescent,
With steps to the blue water.

This glorious clime, this firmament, whose lights
Dart mitigated influence through their veil
Of pale blue atmosphere; whose tears keep green
The pavement of this moist all-feeding earth;                        _40
This vaporous horizon, whose dim round
Is bastioned by the circumfluous sea,
Repelling invasion from the sacred towers,
Presses upon me like a dungeon's grate,
A low dark roof, a damp and narrow wall.

The
royal host, in all probability, expected a smooth, flattering answer
from the lips of his new guest, extolling his virtues, and promising
him heavenly rewards, but the Blue-eyed Brahmin bluntly answered: "No
merit at all."

A more important
personage in the history of Zen previous to the Blue-eyed Brahmin is
Buddhabhadra, a well-known Zen master, who came over to China A.D.

There are characters, some long, some
short, some round, some square, some blue, some red, some yellow, and
some white-in short, all the phenomena in the universe are the
characters with which the sutra is written."

This is the doctrine called by the Hinayanists the Holy Truth of
Impurity.[FN#146]


[FN#146]  Mahasaptipatthana Suttanta, 7, runs as follows: "And,
moreover, bhikkhu, a brother, just as if he had been a body abandoned
in the charnel-field, dead for one, two, or three days, swollen,
turning black and blue, and decomposed, apply that perception to this
very body (of his own), reflecting: 'This body, too, is even so
constituted, is of such a nature, has not got beyond that (fate).'"


And, again, Transience holds its tyrannical sway not only over the
material but over the spiritual world.

'The blue are not the yellow,' replied Wei Shan, 'the long
are not the short.

The
waters tinge the rivulets with heavenly blue."

CONTENTS

  1 The Frog King, or Iron Henry (Der Froschkönig oder der eiserne Heinrich)
  2 Cat and Mouse in Partnership (Katze und Maus in Gesellschaft)
  3 Our Lady's Child (Marienkind)
  4 The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was (Märchen
    von einem, der auszog, das Fürchten zu lernen)
  5 The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids (Der Wolf und die sieben jungen
    Geißlein)
  6 Faithful John (Der treue Johannes)
  7 The Good Bargain (Der gute Handel)
  8 The Strange Musician (Der wunderliche Spielmann)
  9 The Twelve Brothers (Die zwölf Brüder)
 10 The Pack of Ragamuffins (Das Lumpengesindel)
 11 Little Brother and Little Sister (Brüderchen und Schwesterchen)
 12 Rapunzel (Rapunzel)
 13 The Three Little Men in the Forest (Die drei Männlein im Walde)
 14 The Three Spinning Women (Die drei Spinnerinnen)
 15 Hansel and Gretel (Hänsel und Gretel)
 16 The Three Snake-Leaves (Die drei Schlangenblätter)
 17 The White Snake (Die weiße Schlange)
 18 Straw, Coal, and Bean (Strohhalm, Kohle und Bohne)
 19 The Fisherman and His Wife (Von dem Fischer un syner Fru)
 20 The Brave Little Tailor (Das tapfere Schneiderlein)
 21 Cinderella (Aschenputtel)
 22 The Riddle (Das Rätsel)
 23 The Mouse, the Bird, and the Sausage (Von dem Mäuschen, Vögelchen
    und der Bratwurst)
 24 Frau Holle (Frau Holle)
 25 The Seven Ravens (Die sieben Raben)
 26 Little Red-Cap (Rotkäppchen)
 27 The Bremen Town Musicians (Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten)
 28 The Singing Bone (Der singende Knochen)
 29 The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs (Der Teufel mit den drei goldenen
    Haaren)
 30 Little Louse and Little Flea (Läuschen und Flöhchen)
 31 The Girl without Hands (Das Mädchen ohne Hände)
 32 Clever Hans (Der gescheite Hans)
 33 The Three Languages (Die drei Sprachen)
 34 Clever Elsie (Die kluge Else)
 35 The Tailor in Heaven (Der Schneider im Himmel)
 36 The Wishing-table, the Gold-ass, and the Cudgel in the Sack
    (Tischchendeckdich, Goldesel und Knüppel aus dem Sack)
 37 Thumbling (Daumesdick)
 38 The Wedding of Mrs. Fox (Die Hochzeit der Frau Füchsin)
 39 The Elves (Die Wichtelmänner)
 40 The Robber Bridegroom (Der Räuberbräutigam)
 41 Herr Korbes (Herr Korbes)
 42 The Godfather (Der Herr Gevatter)
 43 Frau Trude (Frau Trude)
 44 Godfather Death (Der Gevatter Tod)
 45 Thumbling as Journeyman [Thumbling's Travels] (Daumerlings
    Wanderschaft)
 46 Fitcher's Bird [Fowler's Fowl] (Fitchers Vogel)
 47 The Juniper-Tree (Von dem Machandelboom)
 48 Old Sultan (Der alte Sultan)
 49 The Six Swans (Die sechs Schwäne)
 50 Little Briar-Rose (Dornröschen)
 51 Foundling-Bird (Fundevogel)
 52 King Thrushbeard (König Drosselbart)
 53 Little Snow-White (Sneewittchen)
 54 The Knapsack, the Hat, and the Horn (Der Ranzen, das Hütlein und das
    Hörnlein)
 55 Rumpelstiltskin (Rumpelstilzchen)
 56 Sweetheart Roland (Der Liebste Roland)
 57 The Golden Bird (Der goldene Vogel)
 58 The Dog and the Sparrow (Der Hund und der Sperling)
 59 Frederick and Catherine (Der Frieder und das Catherlieschen)
 60 The Two Brothers (Die zwei Brüder)
 61 The Little Peasant (Das Bürle)
 62 The Queen Bee (Die Bienenkönigin)
 63 The Three Feathers (Die drei Federn)
 64 The Golden Goose (Die goldene Gans)
 65 Allerleirauh [All-Kinds-Of-Fur] (Allerleirauh)
 66 The Hare's Bride (Häsichenbraut)
 67 The Twelve Huntsmen (Die zwölf Jäger)
 68 The Thief and His Master (De Gaudeif un sien Meester)
 69 Jorinde and Joringel (Jorinde und Joringel)
 70 The Three Children of Fortune (Die drei Glückskinder)
 71 How Six Men Got On in the World (Sechse kommen durch die ganze Welt)
 72 The Wolf and the Man (Der Wolf und der Mensch)
 73 The Wolf and the Fox (Der Wolf und der Fuchs)
 74 The Fox and His Cousin (Der Fuchs und die Frau Gevatterin)
 75 The Fox and the Cat (Der Fuchs und die Katze)
 76 The Pink (Die Nelke)
 77 Clever Grethel (Das kluge Gretel)
 78 The Old Man and His Grandson (Der alte Großvater und der Enkel)
 79 The Water-Nix (Die Wassernixe)
 80 The Death of the Little Hen (Von dem Tode des Hühnchens)
 81 Brother Lustig (Bruder Lustig)
 82 Gambling Hansel (De Spielhansl)
 83 Hans in Luck (Hans im Glück)
 84 Hans Married (Hans heiratet)
 85 The Gold-Children (Die Goldkinder)
 86 The Fox and the Geese (Der Fuchs und die Gänse)
 87 The Poor Man and the Rich Man (Der Arme und der Reiche)
 88 The Singing, Springing Lark (Das singende springende Löweneckerchen)
 89 The Goose-Girl (Die Gänsemagd)
 90 The Young Giant (Der junge Riese)
 91 The Gnome (Dat Erdmänneken)
 92 The King of the Golden Mountain (Der König vom goldenen Berg)
 93 The Raven (Die Rabe)
 94 The Peasant's Clever Daughter (Die kluge Bauerntochter)
 95 Old Hildebrand (Der alte Hildebrand)
 96 The Three Little Birds (De drei Vügelkens)
 97 The Water of Life (Das Wasser des Lebens)
 98 Dr. Know-All (Doktor Allwissend)
 99 The Spirit in the Bottle (Der Geist im Glas)
100 The Devil's Sooty Brother (Des Teufels rußiger Bruder)
101 Bearskin (Der Bärenhäuter)
102 The Willow-Wren and the Bear (Der Zaunkönig und der Bär)
103 Sweet Porridge (Der süße Brei)
104 Wise Folks (Die klugen Leute)
105 Stories about Snakes (Märchen von der Unke)
106 The Poor Miller's Boy and the Cat (Der arme Müllerbursch und das
    Kätzchen)
107 The Two Travellers (Die beiden Wanderer)
108 Hans the Hedgehog (Hans mein Igel)
109 The Shroud (Das Totenhemdchen)
110 The Jew among Thorns (Der Jude im Dorn)
111 The Skilful Huntsman (Der gelernte Jäger)
112 The Flail from Heaven (Der Dreschflegel vom Himmel)
113 The Two Kings' Children (De beiden Künigeskinner)
114 The Cunning Little Tailor (Vom klugen Schneiderlein)
115 The Bright Sun Brings It to Light (Die klare Sonne bringt's an den Tag)
116 The Blue Light (Das blaue Licht)
117 The Wilful Child (Das eigensinnige Kind)
118 The Three Army Surgeons (Die drei Feldscherer)
119 The Seven Swabians (Die sieben Schwaben)
120 The Three Apprentices (Die drei Handwerksburschen)
121 The King's Son Who Feared Nothing (Der Königssohn, der sich vor nichts
    fürchtet)
122 Donkey Cabbages (Der Krautesel)
123 The Old Woman in the Wood (Die Alte im Wald)
124 The Three Brothers (Die drei Brüder)
125 The Devil and His Grandmother (Der Teufel und seine Großmutter)
126 Ferdinand the Faithful (Ferenand getrü un Ferenand ungetrü)
127 The Iron Stove (Der Eisenofen)
128 The Lazy Spinner (Die faule Spinnerin)
129 The Four Skilful Brothers (Die vier kunstreichen Brüder)
130 One-Eye, Two-Eyes, and Three-Eyes (Einäuglein, Zweiäuglein und
    Dreiäuglein)
131 Fair Katrinelje and Pif Paf Poltrie (Die schöne Katrinelje und Pif Paf
    Poltrie)
132 The Fox and the Horse (Der Fuchs und das Pferd)
133 The Shoes that Were Danced to Pieces (Die zertanzten Schuhe)
134 The Six Servants (Die sechs Diener)
135 The White Bride and the Black One (Die weiße und die schwarze Braut)
136 Iron John (Der Eisenhans)
137 The Three Black Princesses (De drei schwatten Prinzessinnen)
138 Knoist and His Three Sons (Knoist un sine dre Sühne)
139 The Maid of Brakel (Dat Mäken von Brakel)
140 Domestic Servants (Das Hausgesinde)
141 The Lambkin and the Little Fish (Das Lämmchen und Fischchen)
142 Simeli Mountain (Simeliberg)
143 Going A-Travelling (Up Reisen gohn)
144 The Donkey (Das Eselein)
145 The Ungrateful Son (Der undankbare Sohn)
146 The Turnip (Die Rübe)
147 The Old Man Made Young Again (Das junggeglühte Männlein)
148 The Lord's Animals and the Devil's (Des Herrn und des Teufels Getier)
149 The Beam (Der Hahnenbalken)
150 The Old Beggar-Woman (Die alte Bettelfrau)
151 The Three Sluggards (Die drei Faulen)
151* The Twelve Idle Servants (Die zwölf faulen Knechte)
152 The Shepherd Boy (Das Hirtenbüblein)
153 The Star-Money (Die Sterntaler)
154 The Stolen Farthings (Der gestohlene Heller)
155 Brides on their Trial (Die Brautschau)
156 Odds and Ends (Die Schlickerlinge)
157 The Sparrow and His Four Children (Der Sperling und seine vier Kinder)
158 The Story of Schlauraffen Land [The Tale of Cockaigne] (Das Märchen
    vom Schlauraffenland)
159 The Ditmarsh Tale of Wonders (Das Diethmarsische Lügenmärchen)
160 A Riddling Tale (Rätselmärchen)
161 Snow-White and Rose-Red (Schneeweißchen und Rosenrot)
162 The Wise Servant (Der kluge Knecht)
163 The Glass Coffin (Der gläserne Sarg)
164 Lazy Harry (Der faule Heinz)
165 The Griffin (Der Vogel Greif)
166 Strong Hans (Der starke Hans)
167 The Peasant in Heaven (Das Bürle im Himmel)
168 Lean Lisa (Die hagere Liese)
169 The Hut in the Forest (Das Waldhaus)
170 Sharing Joy and Sorrow (Lieb und Leid teilen)
171 The Willow-Wren (Der Zaunkönig)
172 The Sole [The Flounder] (Die Scholle)
173 The Bittern and Hoopoe (Rohrdommel und Wiedehopf)
174 The Owl (Die Eule)
175 The Moon (Der Mond)
176 The Duration of Life (Die Lebenszeit)
177 Death's Messengers (Die Boten des Todes)
178 Master Pfriem (Meister Pfriem)
179 The Goose-Girl at the Well (Die Gänsehirtin am Brunnen)
180 Eve's Various Children (Die ungleichen Kinder Evas)
181 The Nixie of the Mill-Pond (Die Nixe im Teich)
182 The Little Folks' Presents (Die Geschenke des kleinen Volkes)
183 The Giant and the Tailor (Der Riese und der Schneider)
184 The Nail (Der Nagel)
185 The Poor Boy in the Grave (Der arme Junge im Grab)
186 The True Sweetheart [The True Bride] (Die wahre Braut)
187 The Hare and the Hedgehog (Der Hase und der Igel)
188 The Spindle, the Shuttle, and the Needle (Spindel, Weberschiffchen und
    Nadel)
189 The Peasant and the Devil (Der Bauer und der Teufel)
190 The Crumbs on the Table (Die Brosamen auf dem Tisch)
191 The Sea-Hare (Das Meerhäschen)
192 The Master Thief (Der Meisterdieb)
193 The Drummer (Der Trommler)
194 The Ear of Corn (Die Kornähre)
195 The Grave Mound (Der Grabhügel)
196 Old Rinkrank (Oll Rinkrank)
197 The Crystal Ball (Die Kristallkugel)
198 Maid Maleen (Jungfrau Maleen)
199 The Boot of Buffalo Leather (Der Stiefel von Büffelleder)
200 The Golden Key (Der goldene Schlüssel)

Children's Legends

Legend 1 St. Joseph in the Forest (Der heilige Joseph im Walde)
Legend 2 The Twelve Apostles (Die zwölf Apostel)
Legend 3 The Rose (Die Rose)
Legend 4 Poverty and Humility Lead to Heaven (Armut und Demut führen zum
         Himmel)
Legend 5 God's Food (Gottes Speise)
Legend 6 The Three Green Twigs (Die drei grünen Zweige)
Legend 7 Our Lady's Little Glass (Muttergottesgläschen)
Legend 8 The Aged Mother (Die alte Mütterchen)
Legend 9 The Heavenly Wedding (Die himmlische Hochzeit)
Legend 10 The Hazel Branch (Die Haselrute)



1 The Frog-King, or Iron Henry

In old times when wishing still helped one, there lived a king whose
daughters were all beautiful, but the youngest was so beautiful that the
sun itself, which has seen so much, was astonished whenever it shone in
her face.

And she answered, "I am a king's daughter, and am seeking
my twelve brothers, and I will walk as far as the sky is blue until I
find them."

And when he came to the sea the water
was quite purple and dark-blue, and grey and thick, and no longer so
green and yellow, but it was still quiet.

And yet in the midst of the sky there was still a small bit of
blue, though on every side it was as red as in a heavy storm. So, full
of despair, he went and stood in much fear and said,

"Flounder, flounder in the sea, Come, I pray thee, here to me;" For my
wife, good Ilsabil, Wills not as I'd have her will.

Then spoke
the King, "I will go as far as the sky is blue, and will neither eat
nor drink until I have found again my dear wife and my child, if in the
meantime they have not been killed, or died of hunger."

So they went to the water together, and just then there
were some of the small fleecy clouds in the blue sky, which are called
little lambs, and they were reflected in the water, whereupon the peasants
cried, "We already see the sheep down below!"

Then they were driven away from each other,
and carried into the blue sky over all the mountains one here, the other
there.

"You once fell on
your head when you were a little child, and that affects you even now;
but let me tell you this, if you do anything foolish, I will make your
back black and blue, and not with paint, I assure you, but with the
stick which I have in my hand, and the colouring shall last a whole year,
you may rely on that."

Swiftly she spread
out beside this one of the blue silk handkerchiefs which snakes have
such a strong liking for, and which are the only things they will
creep on.

116 The Blue Light

There was once on a time a soldier who for many years had served the
King faithfully, but when the war came to an end could serve no longer
because of the many wounds which he had received.

Behind my house, there is an old dry well,
into which my light has fallen, it burns blue, and never goes out, and
you shall bring it up again for me."

He found the blue light, and
made her a signal to draw him up again.

She did draw him up, but when he
came near the edge, she stretched down her hand and wanted to take the
blue light away from him. "No," said he, perceiving her evil intention,
"I will not give thee the light until I am standing with both feet upon
the ground."

The poor soldier fell without injury on the moist ground, and the blue
light went on burning, but of what use was that to him?

"This shall be my last pleasure," thought he,
pulled it out, lit it at the blue light and began to smoke.

The little
man took him by the hand, and led him through an underground passage,
but he did not forget to take the blue light with him. On the way the
dwarf showed him the treasures which the witch had collected and hidden
there, and the soldier took as much gold as he could carry.

"Nothing more is needed than that thou shouldst light thy
pipe at the blue light, and I will appear before thee at once."

In his flight he had forgotten the most valuable
things he had, the blue light and the gold, and had only one ducat in
his pocket.

"Go wheresoever they take you, and let
them do what they will, only take the blue light with you."

Then the soldier pulled out
his pipe and lighted it at the blue light, and as soon as a few wreaths
of smoke had ascended, the mannikin was there with a small cudgel in
his hand, and said, "What does my lord command?"

Then her eyes were opened, and she saw that she was
standing with her clothes lifted up in the middle of a field that was
blue with the flowers of blue flax.

The maiden had scarcely opened the bottles
when the blue smoke rushed out and changed itself into living men, in
whom she recognized her servants and her people.

When she had reached the
summit, quite a different sight presented itself to her; the sky was blue,
the air soft, the ground sloped gently downwards, and on a green meadow,
gay with flowers of every colour, stood a pretty cottage.

Once when he was out he perceived in the blue distance a steep hill,
and behind it a tower reaching to the clouds, which rose up out of a
wild dark forest. "Thunder and lightning," cried the tailor, "what is
that?"

Then
the drummer walked backwards and forwards up above, and looked over
the trees, and when he perceived a mountain in the blue distance, he
thought, "That must be the glass-mountain," and so it was.

The sky was blue, and a fresh breeze played
on their faces; but how melancholy everything looked all around!

He looked at the sky, which was so beautifully
pure and blue, then he sighed, and said, "How well must all be with one
up there in heaven!"

High overhead in the clear
heavens small rosy clouds seemed hardly to move across the sky but to be
sinking into its depths of blue.

(Sergei Petrovitch drew a blue
checked handkerchief out of his pocket and began to unfold it.) "There
are such women, no doubt."

It was only in his blue eyes, with their overhanging brows and
somewhat fixed look, that one could trace an expression, not exactly
of melancholy, nor exactly of weariness, and his voice had almost too
measured a cadence.

The latter,
as though by design, had that morning arranged his locks a la Titus,
and put on a new English coat of a blue colour, high boots with little
tassels and very tight modish buckskin breeches.

A multitude of darkish clouds with blurred edges
were creeping across the pale blue sky; a fairly strong breeze blew a
dry and steady gale, without dispelling the heat.

And again he fell to listening
to the silence, expecting nothing--and at the same time constantly
expecting something; the silence enfolded him on all sides, the sun
moved calmly in the peaceful blue sky, and the clouds sailed calmly
across it; they seemed to know why and whither they were sailing.

Chapter XXV


When Lavretsky reached home, he was met at the door of the drawing-room
by a tall, thin man, in a thread-bare blue coat, with a wrinkled, but
lively face, with disheveled grey whiskers, a long straight nose, and
small fiery eyes.

He found his wife at breakfast; Ada, in curl-papers, in a little white
frock with blue ribbons, was eating her mutton cutlet.

For December, and
January, and the latter part of November, you must take such things as
are green all winter: holly; ivy; bays; juniper; cypress-trees; yew;
pine-apple-trees; fir-trees; rosemary; lavender; periwinkle, the white,
the purple, and the blue; germander; flags; orange-trees; lemon-trees;
and myrtles, if they be stoved; and sweet marjoram, warm set.

For March, there come violets, specially the
single blue, which are the earliest; the yellow daffodil; the daisy; the
almond-tree in blossom; the peach-tree in blossom; the cornelian-tree
in blossom; sweet-briar.

He scarcely
knew a single soul in the metropolis: and were it not for his doctor,
and the society of his blue-pill, and his liver complaint, he must have
died of loneliness.

But he was
always exceedingly communicative in a man's party, and has told this
delightful tale many scores of times to his apothecary, Dr. Gollop,
when he came to inquire about the liver and the blue-pill.

She sang a French song, which Joseph did not
understand in the least, and which George confessed he did not
understand, and then a number of those simple ballads which were the
fashion forty years ago, and in which British tars, our King, poor
Susan, blue-eyed Mary, and the like, were the principal themes.

was; for the coaches, where are they?), and the
fat widow with the brandy-bottle, took their places inside--how the
porter asked them all for money, and got sixpence from the gentleman
and five greasy halfpence from the fat widow--and how the carriage at
length drove away--now threading the dark lanes of Aldersgate, anon
clattering by the Blue Cupola of St. Paul's, jingling rapidly by the
strangers' entry of Fleet-Market, which, with Exeter 'Change, has now
departed to the world of shadows--how they passed the White Bear in
Piccadilly, and saw the dew rising up from the market-gardens of
Knightsbridge--how Turnhamgreen, Brentwood, Bagshot, were passed--need
not be told here.

and the
waiters, yea, and the inns at which they waited, and the cold rounds of
beef inside, and the stunted ostler, with his blue nose and clinking
pail, where is he, and where is his generation?

Being a light-complexioned woman,
she wore light clothes, as most blondes will, and appeared, in
preference, in draggled sea-green, or slatternly sky-blue.

What
is there in a pair of pink cheeks and blue eyes forsooth?

The tolling over, the head
of the family thrust his hands into the great tail-pockets of his great
blue coat with brass buttons, and without waiting for a further
announcement strode downstairs alone, scowling over his shoulder at the
four females.

(She
lay sick in the state bedroom, into which you entered by the little
blue saloon.) His father was always meeting him there; or if he came
down the corridor ever so quietly, his father's door was sure to open,
and the hyena face of the old gentleman to glare out.

Captain Crawley looked savagely at the Lieutenant out of his little
blue eyes, and watched him when he went up to resume his acquaintance
with the fair governess.

At any rate she purchased a yellow shawl, a pair of
green boots, and a light blue hat with a red feather with three guineas
which Rebecca gave her, and as little Sharp was by no means too liberal
with her money, no doubt it was for services rendered that Betty Martin
was so bribed.

"Shall I sing 'Blue Eyed Mary' or the air from the Cabinet?"

One gusty, raw day at the end of April--the rain whipping the pavement
of that ancient street where the old Slaughters' Coffee-house was once
situated--George Osborne came into the coffee-room, looking very
haggard and pale; although dressed rather smartly in a blue coat and
brass buttons, and a neat buff waistcoat of the fashion of those days.

Here was his friend Captain Dobbin, in blue and brass too, having
abandoned the military frock and French-grey trousers, which were the
usual coverings of his lanky person.

Some ten days after the above ceremony, three young men of our
acquaintance were enjoying that beautiful prospect of bow windows on
the one side and blue sea on the other, which Brighton affords to the
traveller.

Sometimes it is towards the ocean--smiling with countless
dimples, speckled with white sails, with a hundred bathing-machines
kissing the skirt of his blue garment--that the Londoner looks
enraptured: sometimes, on the contrary, a lover of human nature rather
than of prospects of any kind, it is towards the bow windows that he
turns, and that swarm of human life which they exhibit.

She had put on the neatest and freshest white frock
imaginable, and with bare shoulders and a little necklace, and a light
blue sash, she looked the image of youthful innocence and girlish
happiness.

It was a
triangular billet, on pink paper, and sealed with a dove and an olive
branch, and a profusion of light blue sealing wax, and it was written
in a very large, though undecided female hand.

There in the wardrobe
hung those wonderful robes--pink and blue and many-tinted.

Glorvina, a very handsome, fresh-coloured,
black-haired, blue-eyed young lady, who could ride a horse, or play a
sonata with any girl out of the County Cork, seemed to be the very
person destined to insure Dobbin's happiness--much more than that poor
good little weak-spur'ted Amelia, about whom he used to take on
so.--"Look at Glorvina enter a room," Mrs. O'Dowd would say, "and
compare her with that poor Mrs. Osborne, who couldn't say boo to a
goose.

He was a fine open-faced boy, with blue eyes and waving flaxen hair,
sturdy in limb, but generous and soft in heart, fondly attaching
himself to all who were good to him--to the pony--to Lord Southdown,
who gave him the horse (he used to blush and glow all over when he saw
that kind young nobleman)--to the groom who had charge of the pony--to
Molly, the cook, who crammed him with ghost stories at night, and with
good things from the dinner--to Briggs, whom he plagued and laughed
at--and to his father especially, whose attachment towards the lad was
curious too to witness.

At home he gave himself up to the perusal
of Blue Books, to the alarm and wonder of Lady Jane, who thought he was
killing himself by late hours and intense application.

However much he might be
disposed to hate all parvenus (Mr. Wenham himself was a staunch old
True Blue Tory, and his father a small coal-merchant in the north of
England), this aide-de-camp of the Marquis never showed any sort of
hostility to the new favourite, but pursued her with stealthy
kindnesses and a sly and deferential politeness which somehow made
Becky more uneasy than other people's overt hostilities.

Rawdon sat down in
the study before the Baronet's table, set out with the orderly blue
books and the letters, the neatly docketed bills and symmetrical
pamphlets, the locked account-books, desks, and dispatch boxes, the
Bible, the Quarterly Review, and the Court Guide, which all stood as if
on parade awaiting the inspection of their chief.

One was fat,
with mustachios, and the other was lean and long, in a blue frock-coat,
with a brown face and a grizzled head.

with all her voice, brought up those worthy
people, who had already been surveying the Major from the casement of
the ornamental kitchen, and were astonished to find their daughter in
the little passage in the embrace of a great tall man in a blue
frock-coat and white duck trousers.

That officer, then, in his blue frock-coat and buckskin gloves, gave
the young lady his arm, and they walked away very gaily.

The gentleman, pinioned as he was by these two
ladies, carried further a parasol, shawl, and basket, so that his arms
were entirely engaged, and of course he was unable to touch his hat in
acknowledgement of the curtsey with which Miss Mary Clapp greeted him.

He merely bowed his head in reply to her salutation, which the two
ladies returned with a patronizing air, and at the same time looking
severely at the individual in the blue coat and bamboo cane who
accompanied Miss Polly.

Jos, although provided with some
of the most splendid vests that Calcutta could furnish, thought he
could not go to town until he was supplied with one or two of these
garments, and selected a crimson satin, embroidered with gold
butterflies, and a black and red velvet tartan with white stripes and a
rolling collar, with which, and a rich blue satin stock and a gold pin,
consisting of a five-barred gate with a horseman in pink enamel jumping
over it, he thought he might make his entry into London with some
dignity.

Some of the ladies were very blue and well informed,
reading Mrs. Somerville and frequenting the Royal Institution; others
were severe and Evangelical, and held by Exeter Hall.

At this time of summer evening, the cows are trooping down from
the hills, lowing and with their bells tinkling, to the old town, with
its old moats, and gates, and spires, and chestnut-trees, with long
blue shadows stretching over the grass; the sky and the river below
flame in crimson and gold; and the moon is already out, looking pale
towards the sunset.

One day it was Lady Partlet and her daughters
whom Becky confronted as she was walking modestly on Boulogne pier, the
cliffs of Albion shining in the distance across the deep blue sea.

He wore his collar and orders,
his blue ribbon and garter.

Francis brought out the stained old blue cloak
lined with red camlet, which had wrapped the owner up any time these
fifteen years, and had manchen Sturm erlebt, as a favourite song of
those days said.

It was now the middle of May, and the morning was remarkably serene,
when Mr Allworthy walked forth on the terrace, where the dawn opened
every minute that lovely prospect we have before described to his eye;
and now having sent forth streams of light, which ascended the blue
firmament before him, as harbingers preceding his pomp, in the full
blaze of his majesty rose the sun, than which one object alone in this
lower creation could be more glorious, and that Mr Allworthy himself
presented--a human being replete with benevolence, meditating in what
manner he might render himself most acceptable to his Creator, by
doing most good to his creatures.

But though the water could clear
off the blood, it could not remove the black and blue marks which
Thwackum had imprinted on both his face and breast, and which, being
discerned by Sophia, drew from her a sigh and a look full of
inexpressible tenderness.

He corroborated
every circumstance which the other had deposed; nay, he produced the
record upon his breast, where the handwriting of Mr Jones remained
very legible in black and blue.

"First, from two lovely blue eyes, whose bright orbs flashed lightning
at their discharge, flew forth two pointed ogles; but, happily for our
heroe, hit only a vast piece of beef which he was then conveying into
his plate, and harmless spent their force.

On some great and unusual occasion we find
him say: --

But him the blue-eyed goddess did inspire;

and elsewhere: --

But some immortal turned my mind away,
To think what others of the deed would say;

and again: --

Were 't his own thought or were 't a god's command.

His general personal appearance may be known by his statues; only his
blue eyes, of themselves extremely keen and glaring, were rendered
all the more forbidding and terrible by the complexion of his face,
in which white was mixed with rough blotches of fiery red.

Blue-eyed Athene is its guard,
And Morian Zeus its sleepless ward.

Abraham in red going to sacrifice Isaac in blue, and Daniel in yellow
cast into a den of green lions, were the most prominent of these.

All this I saw in the first glance after I crossed the
threshold--child-like, according to my theory--and then Peggotty opened
a little door and showed me my bedroom. It was the completest and most
desirable bedroom ever seen--in the stern of the vessel; with a little
window, where the rudder used to go through; a little looking-glass,
just the right height for me, nailed against the wall, and framed with
oyster-shells; a little bed, which there was just room enough to get
into; and a nosegay of seaweed in a blue mug on the table.

Likewise by a most beautiful little girl (or I thought her so)
with a necklace of blue beads on, who wouldn't let me kiss her when I
offered to, but ran away and hid herself.

'If I was ever to be a lady, I'd give him a sky-blue
coat with diamond buttons, nankeen trousers, a red velvet waistcoat, a
cocked hat, a large gold watch, a silver pipe, and a box of money.'

I am sure my fancy raised up
something round that blue-eyed mite of a child, which etherealized,
and made a very angel of her.

I forget whether it was the Blue Bull, or the
Blue Boar; but I know it was the Blue Something, and that its likeness
was painted up on the back of the coach.

That would obviously be inconvenient and unpleasant to the
customers, besides entailing on the Blue Whatever-it-was, the risk of
funeral expenses.

Then, we had more tasks until tea, which Mr. Mell drank out of a blue
teacup, and I out of a tin pot.

How well I recollect our sitting there, talking in whispers; or their
talking, and my respectfully listening, I ought rather to say; the
moonlight falling a little way into the room, through the window,
painting a pale window on the floor, and the greater part of us in
shadow, except when Steerforth dipped a match into a phosphorus-box,
when he wanted to look for anything on the board, and shed a blue glare
over us that was gone directly!

In a tight sky-blue suit that made his arms and legs like
German sausages, or roly-poly puddings, he was the merriest and most
miserable of all the boys.

He was
taken ill in the night--quite prostrate he was--in consequence of Crab;
and after being drugged with black draughts and blue pills, to an extent
which Demple (whose father was a doctor) said was enough to undermine
a horse's constitution, received a caning and six chapters of Greek
Testament for refusing to confess.

All within was the same, down to the seaweed
in the blue mug in my bedroom. I went into the out-house to look about
me; and the very same lobsters, crabs, and crawfish possessed by the
same desire to pinch the world in general, appeared to be in the same
state of conglomeration in the same old corner.

But when she drew nearer, and I saw her blue eyes looking bluer, and her
dimpled face looking brighter, and her whole self prettier and gayer, a
curious feeling came over me that made me pretend not to know her, and
pass by as if I were looking at something a long way off.

I was running on, very fast indeed, when my eyes rested on little
Em'ly's face, which was bent forward over the table, listening with the
deepest attention, her breath held, her blue eyes sparkling like jewels,
and the colour mantling in her cheeks.

Peggotty was dressed as usual, in her neat and quiet mourning; but Mr.
Barkis bloomed in a new blue coat, of which the tailor had given him
such good measure, that the cuffs would have rendered gloves unnecessary
in the coldest weather, while the collar was so high that it pushed his
hair up on end on the top of his head.

My room was at the top of the house, at the back: a close
chamber; stencilled all over with an ornament which my young imagination
represented as a blue muffin; and very scantily furnished.

He was very cleanly dressed, in a blue coat, striped
waistcoat, and nankeen trousers; and his fine frilled shirt and cambric
neckcloth looked unusually soft and white, reminding my strolling fancy
(I call to mind) of the plumage on the breast of a swan.

How many winter days have I seen him, standing
blue-nosed, in the snow and east wind, looking at the boys going down
the long slide, and clapping his worsted gloves in rapture!

There was a chest of drawers with an
escritoire top, for Uriah to read or write at of an evening; there was
Uriah's blue bag lying down and vomiting papers; there was a company of
Uriah's books commanded by Mr. Tidd; there was a corner cupboard: and
there were the usual articles of furniture.

She is dressed in blue, with
blue flowers in her hair--forget-me-nots--as if SHE had any need to wear
forget-me-nots.

I only know that I swim about in space, with a
blue angel, in a state of blissful delirium, until I find myself alone
with her in a little room, resting on a sofa.

I go home in a state of unspeakable bliss, and waltz in
imagination, all night long, with my arm round the blue waist of my dear
divinity.

It's not fair to abuse my confidence,' I answered, reddening at
the recollection of my blue enslaver.

I saw her, a
most beautiful little creature, with the cloudless blue eyes, that had
looked into my childish heart, turned laughingly upon another child
of Minnie's who was playing near her; with enough of wilfulness in her
bright face to justify what I had heard; with much of the old capricious
coyness lurking in it; but with nothing in her pretty looks, I am sure,
but what was meant for goodness and for happiness, and what was on a
good and happy course.

We parted merrily; and as they all
stood crowded round the door to light us as far as they could upon our
road, I saw the sweet blue eyes of little Em'ly peeping after us, from
behind Ham, and heard her soft voice calling to us to be careful how we
went.

As to the straw hat
and blue ribbons which was on the top of the curls, if I could only have
hung it up in my room in Buckingham Street, what a priceless possession
it would have been!

The scent of a geranium leaf, at this day,
strikes me with a half comical half serious wonder as to what change has
come over me in a moment; and then I see a straw hat and blue ribbons,
and a quantity of curls, and a little black dog being held up, in two
slender arms, against a bank of blossoms and bright leaves.

'That sky-blue suit you used to wear.'

I was
agreeably surprised to find that Littimer was not there, and that we
were attended by a modest little parlour-maid, with blue ribbons in her
cap, whose eye it was much more pleasant, and much less disconcerting,
to catch by accident, than the eye of that respectable man.

For--don't you see,' said Mr. Omer, touching me with his pipe, 'it ain't
likely that a man so short of breath as myself, and a grandfather too,
would go and strain points with a little bit of a blue-eyed blossom,
like her?'

when I DID find the house, and DID dismount at the
garden-gate, and drag those stony-hearted boots across the lawn to Dora
sitting on a garden-seat under a lilac tree, what a spectacle she was,
upon that beautiful morning, among the butterflies, in a white chip
bonnet and a dress of celestial blue!

When I measured Dora's finger for a ring that was to be made of
Forget-me-nots, and when the jeweller, to whom I took the measure, found
me out, and laughed over his order-book, and charged me anything he
liked for the pretty little toy, with its blue stones--so associated
in my remembrance with Dora's hand, that yesterday, when I saw such
another, by chance, on the finger of my own daughter, there was a
momentary stirring in my heart, like pain!

In acknowledgement of this question, addressed to him with extraordinary
curtness, Mr. Heep, uncomfortably clutching the blue bag he carried,
replied that he was pretty well, he thanked my aunt, and hoped she was
the same.

'If I am not mistaken,' said Mr. Spenlow, as Miss Murdstone brought a
parcel of letters out of her reticule, tied round with the dearest bit
of blue ribbon, 'those are also from your pen, Mr. Copperfield?'

Man appears in kitchen, with blue bag, "for
lady's boots left out to heel".

'When she was a child,' he said, lifting up his head soon after we were
left alone, 'she used to talk to me a deal about the sea, and about
them coasts where the sea got to be dark blue, and to lay a-shining and
a-shining in the sun.

Such a beautiful little house as it is, with everything so bright
and new; with the flowers on the carpets looking as if freshly gathered,
and the green leaves on the paper as if they had just come out; with the
spotless muslin curtains, and the blushing rose-coloured furniture, and
Dora's garden hat with the blue ribbon--do I remember, now, how I loved
her in such another hat when I first knew her!--already hanging on its
little peg; the guitar-case quite at home on its heels in a corner;
and everybody tumbling over Jip's pagoda, which is much too big for the
establishment.

Traddles, whom I have taken up by appointment at the turnpike, presents
a dazzling combination of cream colour and light blue; and both he and
Mr. Dick have a general effect about them of being all gloves.

cried Dora, with a kiss, 'don't be a naughty Blue
Beard!

Her hands were clasped upon my shoulder, and her chin rested on them,
and her blue eyes looked quietly into mine.

She answered without moving, otherwise than as the arm I twined
about her may have brought her blue eyes nearer to me:

'I don't mean, you silly fellow, that you should use the name instead
of Dora.

But generally, when I raised my head, I saw her blue eyes looking at me
with the quiet attention of which I have already spoken.

I was not long in recollecting Mrs.
Steerforth's little parlour-maid, who had formerly worn blue ribbons in
her cap.

That there blue water as she used to speak on.

Dora had often seen him since our marriage, and was quite fond of him.
I fancy his figure before me now, standing near her sofa, with his rough
cap in his hand, and the blue eyes of my child-wife raised, with a timid
wonder, to his face.

'It was a pleasant arternoon when she awoke; and so quiet, that there
warn't a sound but the rippling of that blue sea without a tide, upon
the shore.

I thought of the blue-eyed child
who had enchanted me.

HEEP, and only HEEP, is
the Forger and the Cheat."'

Uriah, more blue than white at these words, made a dart at the letter,
as if to tear it in pieces.

What a strange rest and pause in my life there seems to be--and in all
life, within doors and without--when I sit in the quiet, shaded, orderly
room, with the blue eyes of my child-wife turned towards me, and her
little fingers twining round my hand!

A slight figure,' said Mr. Peggotty, looking at the fire,
'kiender worn; soft, sorrowful, blue eyes; a delicate face; a pritty
head, leaning a little down; a quiet voice and way--timid a'most. That's
Em'ly!'

(Singing) who dost reign
  Amongst the Aegean peaks and creeks
  And o'er the deep blue main.

But he to the blue upflew, upflew,
    On the lightliest tips of his wings outspread;
    To me he bequeathed but woe, but woe,
    And tears, sad tears, from my eyes o'erflow,
    Which I, the bereaved, must shed, must shed.

CADMUS (_after hesitation, resolving himself_)
   Raise me thine eyes to yon blue dome of air!

One morning the view was singularly clear; the distant mountains being
projected with the sharpest outline on a heavy bank of dark blue
clouds.

The line where
the red and blue water joined was distinctly defined.

CHAPTER II

RIO DE JANEIRO

Rio de Janeiro--Excursion north of Cape Frio--Great
Evaporation--Slavery--Botofogo Bay--Terrestrial Planariae--Clouds on
the Corcovado--Heavy Rain--Musical Frogs--Phosphorescent
Insects--Elater, springing powers of--Blue Haze--Noise made by a
Butterfly--Entomology--Ants--Wasp killing a Spider--Parasitical
Spider--Artifices of an Epeira--Gregarious Spider--Spider with an
unsymmetrical Web.

The view seen when crossing
the hills behind Praia Grande was most beautiful; the colours were
intense, and the prevailing tint a dark blue; the sky and the calm
waters of the bay vied with each other in splendour.

The atmosphere, seen through a short space of half or
three-quarters of a mile, was perfectly lucid, but at a greater
distance all colours were blended into a most beautiful haze, of a pale
French grey, mingled with a little blue.

This was curiously exhibited in the wake of the
vessel, where a line of blue water was seen mingling in little eddies,
with the adjoining fluid.

On the eastern side of the Cordillera, over the same extent of
latitude, where a blue sky and a fine climate prove that the atmosphere
has been deprived of its moisture by passing over the mountains, the
arid plains of Patagonia support a most scanty vegetation.

Their hair was coarse, but bright and black; and they
wore it in two plaits hanging down to the waist.  They had a high
colour, and eyes that glistened with brilliancy; their legs, feet, and
arms were small and elegantly formed; their ankles, and sometimes their
wrists, were ornamented by broad bracelets of blue beads.

The eggs of the small species appeared, however,
more generally known; and it was remarked, with surprise, that they
were very little less than those of the Rhea, but of a slightly
different form, and with a tinge of pale blue.

It lives on
the bare sand near the sea coast, and from its mottled colour, the
brownish scales being speckled with white, yellowish red, and dirty
blue, can hardly be distinguished from the surrounding surface.

The central and intertropical parts of
the Atlantic swarm with Pteropoda, Crustacea, and Radiata, and with
their devourers the flying-fish, and again with their devourers the
bonitos and albicores; I presume that the numerous lower pelagic
animals feed on the Infusoria, which are now known, from the researches
of Ehrenberg, to abound in the open ocean: but on what, in the clear
blue water, do these Infusoria subsist?

The weather is dry and pleasant, and the fine blue sky is but
seldom obscured.

The water is of a fine blue colour, but
with a slight milky tinge, and not so transparent as at first sight
would have been expected.

As they glided
close over my head, I intently watched from an oblique position, the
outlines of the separate and great terminal feathers of each wing; and
these separate feathers, if there had been the least vibratory
movement, would have appeared as if blended together; but they were
seen distinct against the blue sky.

It is scarcely possible to imagine anything more beautiful than the
beryl-like blue of these glaciers, and especially as contrasted with
the dead white of the upper expanse of snow.

Simple
circumstances--such as the beauty of scarlet cloth or blue beads, the
absence of women, our care in washing ourselves,--excited their
admiration far more than any grand or complicated object, such as our
ship.

At the former place, we have rounded mountains concealed by impervious
forests, which are drenched with the rain, brought by an endless
succession of gales; while at Cape Gregory, there is a clear and bright
blue sky over the dry and sterile plains.

The glimpses which we caught
through the dusky mass were highly interesting; jagged points, cones of
snow, blue glaciers, strong outlines, marked on a lurid sky, were seen
at different distances and heights.

Several
glaciers descended in a winding course from the upper great expanse of
snow to the sea-coast: they may be likened to great frozen Niagaras;
and perhaps these cataracts of blue ice are full as beautiful as the
moving ones of water.

After Tierra del Fuego, the climate felt quite
delicious--the atmosphere so dry, and the heavens so clear and blue
with the sun shining brightly, that all nature seemed sparkling with
life.

How opposite are the sensations when viewing black
mountains half enveloped in clouds, and seeing another range through
the light blue haze of a fine day!

The people all dress in strong woollen
garments, which each family makes for itself, and dyes with indigo of a
dark blue colour.

White massive clouds were piled up
against a dark blue sky, and across them black ragged sheets of vapour
were rapidly driven.

Thank
God, we are not destined here to see the end of it, but hope then to be
in the Pacific Ocean, where a blue sky tells one there is a heaven,--a
something beyond the clouds above our heads.

The atmosphere resplendently
clear; the sky an intense blue; the profound valleys; the wild broken
forms: the heaps of ruins, piled up during the lapse of ages; the
bright-coloured rocks, contrasted with the quiet mountains of snow, all
these together produced a scene no one could have imagined.

We had a fine view of a mass of mountains
called Tupungato, the whole clothed with unbroken snow, in the midst of
which there was a blue patch, no doubt a glacier;--a circumstance of
rare occurrence in these mountains.

184), in explaining the cause of the various
colours of the rivers in South America, remarks that those with blue or
clear water have there source in the Cordillera, where the snow melts.

The day was overpoweringly hot, and the lake looked clear
and blue: I hurried down the cindery slope, and, choked with dust,
eagerly tasted the water--but, to my sorrow, I found it salt as brine.

On the lofty and broken pinnacles, white massive clouds were piled up,
which formed an island in the blue sky, as Eimeo itself did in the blue
ocean.

Moving quickly onwards for weeks together, we meet with nothing but the
same blue, profoundly deep, ocean.

CHAPTER XIX

AUSTRALIA

Sydney--Excursion to Bathurst--Aspect of the Woods--Party of
Natives--Gradual Extinction of the Aborigines--Infection generated by
associated Men in health--Blue Mountains--View of the grand gulf-like
Valleys--Their origin and formation--Bathurst, general civility of the
Lower Orders--State of Society--Van Diemen's Land--Hobart
Town--Aborigines all banished--Mount Wellington--King George's
Sound--Cheerless Aspect of the Country--Bald Head, calcareous casts of
branches of Trees--Party of Natives--Leave Australia.

I slept at
night at a very comfortable inn at Emu ferry, thirty-five miles from
Sydney, and near the ascent of the Blue Mountains.

The greater number of the trees, with
the exception of some of the Blue-gums, do not attain a large size; but
they grow tall and tolerably straight, and stand well apart.

Having crossed a low piece of land on the opposite
side, we reached the slope of the Blue Mountains.

From so grand a title as Blue Mountains, and from
their absolute altitude, I expected to have seen a bold chain of
mountains crossing the country; but instead of this, a sloping plain
presents merely an inconsiderable front to the low land near the coast.
From this first slope, the view of the extensive woodland to the east
was striking, and the surrounding trees grew bold and lofty.

So early in the day
the gulf was filled with a thin blue haze, which, although destroying
the general effect of the view added to the apparent depth at which the
forest was stretched out beneath our feet.

The scenery
resembled that of the high sandstone platform of the Blue Mountains;
the Casuarina (a tree somewhat resembling a Scotch fir) is, however,
here in greater number, and the Eucalyptus in rather less.

This brilliant expanse, several miles in
width, is on all sides divided, either by a line of snow-white breakers
from the dark heaving waters of the ocean, or from the blue vault of
heaven by the strips of land, crowned by the level tops of the
cocoa-nut trees.

Large
masses of Java teak and Yellow wood have also been found, besides
immense trees of red and white cedar, and the blue gumwood of New
Holland, in a perfectly sound condition.

In my volume on "Coral Formations" I have published a map, in which I
have coloured all the atolls dark-blue, the barrier-reefs pale-blue,
and the fringing reefs red.

Now in this map we see
that the reefs tinted pale and dark-blue, which have been produced by
the same order of movement, as a general rule manifestly stand near
each other.

Again we see, that the areas with the two blue tints are
of wide extent; and that they lie separate from extensive lines of
coast coloured red, both of which circumstances might naturally have
been inferred, on the theory of the nature of the reefs having been
governed by the nature of the earth's movement.

It deserves notice
that in more than one instance where single red and blue circles
approach near each other, I can show that there have been oscillations
of level; for in such cases the red or fringed circles consist of
atolls, originally by our theory formed during subsidence, but
subsequently upheaved; and on the other hand, some of the pale-blue or
encircled islands are composed of coral-rock, which must have been
uplifted to its present height before that subsidence took place,
during which the existing barrier-reefs grew upwards.

The larger areas, coloured red
and blue, are all elongated; and between the two colours there is a
degree of rude alternation, as if the rising of one had balanced the
sinking of the other.

Their entire absence from every
one of the great subsiding areas, coloured either pale or dark blue, is
most striking and not less so is the coincidence of the chief volcanic
chains with the parts coloured red, which we are led to conclude have
either long remained stationary, or more generally have been recently
upraised.

Although a few of the vermilion spots occur within no great
distance of single circles tinted blue, yet not one single active
volcano is situated within several hundred miles of an archipelago, or
even small group of atolls.

They are all
whitewashed; so that when illumined by the brilliant sun of midday, and
as seen against the pale blue sky of the horizon, they stand out more
like shadows than real buildings.

Among the other most remarkable spectacles which we have beheld, may be
ranked, the Southern Cross, the cloud of Magellan, and the other
constellations of the southern hemisphere--the water-spout--the glacier
leading its blue stream of ice, overhanging the sea in a bold
precipice--a lagoon-island raised by the reef-building corals--an
active volcano--and the overwhelming effects of a violent earthquake.

Many were the compliments and expressions of politeness that passed
between Don Quixote and Don Fernando; but they were brought to an end by
a traveller who at this moment entered the inn, and who seemed from his
attire to be a Christian lately come from the country of the Moors, for
he was dressed in a short-skirted coat of blue cloth with half-sleeves
and without a collar; his breeches were also of blue cloth, and his cap
of the same colour, and he wore yellow buskins and had a Moorish cutlass
slung from a baldric across his breast. Behind him, mounted upon an ass,
there came a woman dressed in Moorish fashion, with her face veiled and a
scarf on her head, and wearing a little brocaded cap, and a mantle that
covered her from her shoulders to her feet.

"Two of them," said Sancho, "are green, two blood-red, two blue, and one
a mixture of all colours."

She is so cleanly that
not to soil her face she carries her nose turned up, as they say, so that
one would fancy it was running away from her mouth; and with all this she
looks extremely well, for she has a wide mouth; and but for wanting ten
or a dozen teeth and grinders she might compare and compete with the
comeliest. Of her lips I say nothing, for they are so fine and thin that,
if lips might be reeled, one might make a skein of them; but being of a
different colour from ordinary lips they are wonderful, for they are
mottled, blue, green, and purple--let my lord the governor pardon me for
painting so minutely the charms of her who some time or other will be my
daughter; for I love her, and I don't find her amiss."

He had nothing on but a rich petticoat
and a short blue damask cloak with fine gold lace, and his head was
uncovered and adorned only with its own hair, which looked like rings of
gold, so bright and curly was it.