Paint her lovely cheek and nose,
Blending milk with blush of rose;
Paint her pretty, pouting lips,
Where the bee its honey sips,
Where Persuasion sits and smiles,
With a thousand winning wiles.
Every pleasing grace must deck
Her pretty dimpled chin and neck;
And let nameless beauties dwell
In her bosom's gentle swell.
In a thin and purple dress
Veil this form of loveliness:
Her body hide, her shape express.
Enough! no further proof I seek,
She lives—she breathes—soft! did she speak?
arity; but, be it descent from a superior race, be it the soil and clime, such are the women of Ionia."—Ibid., p. 201.
Perhaps the reader would be pleased to see a portrait of the "fair Ionian" in another light, by a master whose unrivalled pencil has left all competitors at an immeasurable distance:—
"You see, this night
Made warriors of more than me. I paused
To look upon her, and her kindled cheek;
Her large black eyes, that flash'd through her long hair
As it stream'd o'er her; her blue veins, that rose
Along her most transparent brow; her nostril
Dilated from its symmetry; her lips
Apart; her voice that clove through all the din,
As a lute's pierceth through the cymbal's clash,
Jarr'd but not drown'd by the loud brattling; her
Waved arms, more dazzling with their own born whiteness
Than the steel her hand held, which she caught up
From a dead soldier's grasp; all these things made
Her seem unto the troops a prophetess
Of victory, or Victory herself,
Come down to hail us hers."
Lord Byron.—Sardanapalus, act 1, scene 1.
