green
“so quick, so fair an eye—So,”
ROMEO AND JULIET, iii. 5.
221
;
“thy rare green eye,”
THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN, v. 1.
144
;
“His eyes were green as leeks”
A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM, v. 1.
326.
(“as green as a leek being a not uncommon
expression)”
“Green eyes were
considered as peculiarly beautiful. . . . The Spanish writers are peculiarly enthusiastic
in the praise of green eyes. So Cervantes, in his novel El Zeloso
Estremeño: ‘Ay que ojos tan grandes y tan rasgados! y por el siglo
de mi madre, que son verdes, que no paracen
sino que son de esmeraldas’”
(WEBER)
. Gifford, after observing that he has“seen many
Norwegian seamen with eyes of this hue, which were invariably quick, keen, and
glancing,” and that the expression “green eyes” is common in our early poets,
cites the following sonnet by Drummond of Hawthornden:
“When Nature now had wonderfully wrought
All Auristella's parts, except her eyes,
To make those twins two lamps in beauty's skies
She counsel of the starry synod [v. 1. “her starry senate”]
sought.
Mars and Apollo first did her advise
To wrap in colours black those comets bright,
That Love him so might soberly disguise,
And, unperceived, wound at every sight:
Chaste Phœbe spake for purest azure dyes:
But Jove and Venus green about the light,
To frame thought best, as bringing most delight,
That to pin'd hearts hope might for aye arise.
Nature, all said, a paradise of green
There plac'd, to make all love which have them seen.” Note on translation of Juvenal, Sat. xiii. 223.
“When Nature now had wonderfully wrought
All Auristella's parts, except her eyes,
To make those twins two lamps in beauty's skies
She counsel of the starry synod [v. 1. “her starry senate”]
sought.
Mars and Apollo first did her advise
To wrap in colours black those comets bright,
That Love him so might soberly disguise,
And, unperceived, wound at every sight:
Chaste Phœbe spake for purest azure dyes:
But Jove and Venus green about the light,
To frame thought best, as bringing most delight,
That to pin'd hearts hope might for aye arise.
Nature, all said, a paradise of green
There plac'd, to make all love which have them seen.” Note on translation of Juvenal, Sat. xiii. 223.
