launcelot’s red-golden hair
“‘And every morn I scarce could pray at all,
For Launcelot’s red-golden hair would play,
Instead of sunlight, on the painted wall. . . ’”
—William Morris, from King Arthur’s Tomb, 1858.
purple thyme and the purple clover
“Fast asleep. Singing birds in their leafy cover
Cannot wake her, nor shake her the gusty blast.
Under the purple thyme and the purple clover
Sleeping at last.”
—Christina Georgina Rossetti, from Sleeping at Last, 1896.
silver fleurs-de-lys
“Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.”
—Christina Georgina Rossetti, from A Birthday, 1862.
green through and through
Scientists in Taiwan say they have bred three pigs that glow in the dark. They claim that while other researchers have bred partly fluorescent pigs, theirs are the only pigs in the world which are green through and through.
The pigs are transgenic, created by adding genetic material from jellyfish into a normal pig embryo. . . .
Taiwan is not claiming a world first. Others have bred partially fluorescent pigs before. But the researchers insist the three pigs they have produced are better. They are the only ones that are green from the inside out. Even their heart and internal organs are green, they say.
—Chris Hogg, reporting for BBC News from Hong Kong, 12 January 2006. Thank you, Apostropher, for your ace aesthetic eye!
dewlight off the rose
“You have seen the huntress moon
Radiantly facing dawn,
Dusky meads between them strewn
Glimmering like downy awn:
Argent Westward glows the hunt,
East the blush about to climb;
One another fair they front,
Transient, yet outshine the time;
Even as dewlight off the rose
In the mind a jewel sows.”
—George Meredith, from The Woods of Westermain, 1883.
delighted eyes
“Quick and far as Colour flies
Taking the delighted eyes,
You of any well that springs
May unfold the heaven of things.”
—George Meredith, from The Woods of Westermain, 1883.
love the light
“You must love the light so well
That no darkness will seem fell,
Love it so you could accost
Fellowly a livid ghost.”
—George Meredith, from The Woods of Westermain, 1883.
white soul
“Without offence to your modesty be it spoken, I have a burning desire to see your Soul stark naked, for I am confident ’tis the prettiest kind of white Soul, in the universe . . . . But if I must be content with seeing your body only, God send it to come quickly: I honor it more than the Diamond-Casket that held Homer’s Illiads. For in the very twinkle of one eye of it, there is more Wit; and in the very dimple of one cheek of it, there is more Meaning, than in all the Souls that ever were casually put into Women.”
—Alexander Pope, from On the Knowledge and Characters of Men.
the diamond blaze
“Tho’ the same Sun with all-diffusive rays
Blush in the Rose, and in the Diamond blaze,
We prize the stronger effort of his pow’r,
And justly set the Gem above the Flow’r.”
—Alexander Pope, from On the Knowledge and Characters of Men.
the beautiful deformed
“It is like looking through a microscope, where every thing assumes a new character and a new consequence, where things are seen in their minutest circumstances and slightest shades of difference; where the little becomes gigantic, the deformed beautiful, and the beautiful deformed.”
—William Hazlitt, commenting on what I call the “trippiness” of the Rape in 1818. Found in The Rape of the Lock, Alexander Pope, edited by Cynthia Wall, 1998.