“The grayest of things blue,
The greenest of things gray”
—that shade of the most beautiful and brilliant eyes well known to Spanish as well as Irish poets, and which Longfellow and Swinburne have not hesitated to describe by the naked and imperfect English adjective. This is the way in which one of these ignorant minstrels expresses what he means, and renders it with a new grace:
“I gave you—oh! I gave you—I gave you my whole love;
On the festival of Mary my poor heart you stole, love,
With your soft green eyes like dew-drops on corn that is springing,
the music of your red lips like sweet starlings singing.”
—Fair Mary Barry.
A beautiful and apt comparison for the sweet, rosy bloom, nowhere found in such perfect charm as in Ireland, was the apple blossom and the berry.
“On her cheek the crimson berry