Blue blood

“ But none of them wept for their Freddy, except
Hum Pickity Wimple Tip.
[Pg 307]
BLUE BLOOD
Spurn not the nobly born
With love affected,
Nor treat with virtuous scorn
The well connected.
High rank involves no shame—
We boast an equal claim
With him of humble name
To be respected!
Blue blood! Blue blood!
When virtuous love is sought,
Thy power is naught,
Though dating from the Flood,
Blue blood!
[Pg 308]
Spare us the bitter pain
Of stern denials,
Nor with low-born disdain
Augment our trials.
Hearts just as pure and fair
May beat in Belgrave Square
As in the lowly air
Of Seven Dials! ”

“ She went straight to her sister's chamber, where they again tried, but in vain, to remove the blood from the key. The voice of Blue Beard again calling for her, she was forced to return, and reluctantly to give him the fatal key.
On examining the key, Blue Beard burst into a terrible rage. "Pray Madam," said he, "how came this blood to be here?"
"I am sure I do not know," replied she, trembling, and turning pale.
"What! do you not know!" cried Blue Beard, in a voice like thunder, which made poor Fatima start with fear; "but I know well! You have been in the forbidden blue closet! ”

“ Severe or over strict in morals; gloom; as, blue and sour religionists; suiting one who is over strict in morals; inculcating an impracticable, severe, or gloomy mortality; as, blue laws.
6. Literary; Ð applied to women; Ð an abbreviation of bluestocking. [Colloq.]
The ladies were very blue and well informed.
Thackeray.
Blue asbestus. See Crocidolite. Ð Blue black, of, or having, a very dark blue color, almost black. Ð Blue blood. See under Blood. Ð Blue buck (Zo”l.) , a small South African antelope (Cephalophus pygm‘us) ; also applied to a larger species (?goceras leucoph‘us) ”

“ All the heaven was filled with colour from the palest, lightest blue at the zenith to the most brilliant crimson in the east, as though it were nature's palette on which she had dashed every tint that she possessed. The sea reflected the rich glow, and the tossing waves were gashed with scarlet streaks. "It looks like a sea of blood," the merchant remarked with a shudder, as he gazed at the wonderful spectacle.
By the returning light the two fugitives were able to notice each other's appearance. Both were pale, haggard, dishevelled, with bloodshot, dark-rimmed eyes and anxious, weary faces. ”

“ If the arterial blood of such a fœtus be of a dark colour, resembling that in the veins of a grown person, we must look upon this to be natural to it, and we may as well inquire why a rose is red, or an iris blue, as why the blood is of a dark, and not of a bright red. But, if we find this dark red change to a bright scarlet in the arteries, as soon as the child has breathed, we have as much reason to conclude that the air occasions this superior redness, as that an acid is the cause of a red colour in the syrup of violets, or an alkali of a green colour in the same. ”

“ Freckles and tan are nothing more than the darkening of the salts of iron in the blood by the action 260 of light; and as blue is, of all colors, most easily affected by it, as we have said, any one can see how destructive to a fine skin a blue veil must be in sunny weather. ”

“ Change of Color.—The blood undergoes a variety of changes in its journey through the system. As it visits the different organs it both gives out and takes up materials. In one place it is enriched, in another it is impoverished. By reason of these alterations in its composition, the blood also changes its color. In one part of the body it is bright red, or arterial; in another it is dark blue, or venous. In the former case it is pure and fit for the support of the tissues ”

“ The horse has not stopped bleeding. Its blood falls on me drop by drop with the regularity of a clock,—as though all the blood that is filtering through the strata of the field and all the punishment of the wounded came to a head in him and through him. Ah, it seems that truth goes farther in all directions than one thought! We bend over the wrong that animals suffer, for them we wholly understand.
Men, men! Everywhere the plain has a mangled outline. Below that horizon, sometimes blue-black and sometimes red-black, the plain is monumental! ”

“ he said, his blue eyes twinkling. “Cabdain Blood is fond of boedry—you remember de abble-blossoms. ”

“ At all events, there they were, remembered again, looking at me from the past, blue eyes that were beautiful and dear to me, whose blue colour was associated with every sweetness and charm in child and woman and with all that is best and highest in human souls; and I could not and had no wish to resist their appeal.
Then came a new experience of the eye that is blue—a meeting with one who almost seemed to be less flesh than spirit. A middle-aged lady, frail, very frail; exceedingly pale from long ill-health, prematurely white-haired, with beautiful grey eyes, gentle but wonderfully bright. ”

“ I am like a dark black night, that has suddenly been flooded with the rapture of a golden sun. O hail! O bright great God, in the form of that blue-eyed beautiful thing before me, that fills me with astonishment and laughter and supreme delight. And presently he said: O thou with the blue flowers in thy hair and the blue wonder in thy enormous eyes, that resemble those of a child, how can it be that in a world so full of them, thou shouldst never yet have set those eyes on either a man or a horse?
Then she started as if from a dream. ”

“ The different shades of blue all indicate religious feeling, and range through all hues from the dark brown-blue of selfish devotion, or the pallid grey-blue of fetish-worship tinged with fear, up to the rich deep clear colour of heartfelt adoration, and the beautiful pale azure of that highest form which implies self-renunciation and union with the divine; the devotional thought of an unselfish heart is very lovely in colour, like the deep blue of a summer sky. Through such clouds of blue will often shine out golden stars of great brilliancy, darting upwards like a shower of sparks. ”

“ All the blues are there, from the faintest shoal-water suggestion of the color, detectable only in the shadow of some overhanging object, all the way through, a little blue and a little bluer still, and again a shade bluer, till you strike the deep, rich Mediterranean splendor which breaks the heart in your bosom, it is so beautiful. ”

“ In spite of her labors she seemed always to be at my elbow, a ceaseless little whimpering in her throat. Her spectacles were befogged with the mist from her old blue eyes, which, like the color of old china, had faded with wetting and drying in years of family use, but she did not again give up to her grief. ”

“ In the nations of Southern Europe, such as Italians and Spaniards, the browner complexion to some extent hides this red, which among darker peoples in other quarters of the world ceases to be discernible. Thus the difference between light and dark races is well observed in their blushing, which is caused by the rush of hot red blood into the vessels near the surface of the body. The contrary effect, paleness, caused by retreat of blood from the surface, is in like manner masked by dark tints of skin. ”

“ It is strong and shrewd; it never gives up; it pursues and fights relentlessly to the ends of the earth; without mercy or pity it hunts down, plunders, overwhelms, exterminates. Only one thing can hold it in check, and that is opposing white blood. Brown blood cannot cope with the white people in the valley, but white blood can; and for the task, the gods have sent me white blood mingled with brown seeded in my soil and grown to it with deep roots. ”

“ Blue agony, burning up with delerium, the wet pastel illusion slides against our craniums. Crass, crass the movement of the waves across a low bow, excessively pleasant. All the more troubled vistas blue with hegemony over earth, drowsiness dropping a plague of lapping edges ”

“ We are familiar with the effects of red which are stimulating, exciting, or irritating. The toreador, recognizing this principle, waves a flaming red mantle before the bull. Blue has an exactly opposite effect. It quiets and soothes, and when it runs into violet, it becomes depressing. Experiment with purple lights and you will find that they give a note of gloom, mystery, or of impending disaster. Yellow is the color that brings gaiety and light-heartedness, as you will recall when you contrast your own feelings on a sunshiny day and on a gray day. ”

“ I asked a shepherd once. “The blueness of blueness,” he answered, in Gaelic. It is so. It is not blue one sees, but the bloom of blue; as on a wild plum, it is not the purple skin we note, but the amethyst bloom of purple which lies upon it. It is beauty, with its own loveliness upon it like a breath. Then the blue deepens, or greys, as the hour and the light compel. The most rare and subtle loveliness is when the grey silhouette of the mountain-ridge, serrated line, or freaked and tormented [Pg 23] peaks, or vast unbroken amplitude, sinks into the sudden deep clearness of the enveloping sky. ”

“ What is the emotional protective color?—why, blue, of course. Blue controls this part of the mind or soul, and by raising ourselves into the vibrations of positive blue, we leave behind us the lower emotions and feelings, and are transported into the higher realms of the soul where these low vibrations and influences cannot follow us. In the same way, the blue colored aura will act as an armor to protect us from the contagion of the low passions and feelings of others. ”

“ Grant Allen, in his book on The Colour Sense, to the effect that the blueness of sea and sky is mainly poetical illusion or inaccuracy, and that sea and sky are found blue only in one experiment out of fourteen. At morning and evening they are usually in great part stained golden. Blue certainly has one advantage over yellow, in that it has the privilege of colouring some of the prettiest eyes in the world. Yellow has a chance only in cases of jaundice and liver complaint, and his colour scheme in such cases is seldom appreciated. ”

“ The eyes of the Goddess of Love were blue; the sky above is blue; the bird of paradise is blue; the deep sea is blue. Press your thumbs on your eyes and what do you see? Blue—the deepest blue imaginable: it is the light of the mind and soul burning in your head, dear; and that is why poets and singers are so fond of blue.'
'Then you think——'
'Think? I know, child. Besides, a man with a blue beard is different from all other men; and besides, again, in the dark all beards are black.'
'But even in the light, dear mother, you think it is changing—just a little?'
'Yes, my darling, I do. ”

“ You would think, by the way she paints, that her colours cost her something enormous: she will only give you a single pure touch [Pg 349] just where the petal turns into light; but down in the bell all is subdued, and under the petal all is subdued, even in the showiest flower. What you thought was bright blue is, when you look close, only dusty grey, or green, or purple, or every colour in the world at once, only a single gleam or streak of pure blue in the centre of it. ”

“ With the fading of the sunset glow a deep blue comes upon all the mountains, [page 141] a blue which strangely seems to grow paler as the sky above them darkens, sinking down upon them through infinite gradations of azure into something mysterious and indescribable, not a color, not a shadow, not a light, but a secret hyaline illumination which transforms them into aerial battlements and ramparts, on whose edge the great stars rest and flame, the watch-fires of the Eternal. ”

“ There was the handkerchief, planted, as I had no doubt; but could not prove; the name stamped on it was Belfield's, but any one can get a rubber stamp made. Then it was stained with blood, as handkerchiefs often are; that blood might or might not be human blood; it did not seem to matter a straw whether it was or not. Nevertheless, I said to myself: If it is human, or at least mammalian blood, that is a fact; and if it is not human blood, that is also a fact. I will have that fact, and then I shall know what its value is. I examined the stain when I reached home, and behold! ”

“ It would seem to be because of such cramping, that no one of the modern students of myth and folk-lore, of primitive ideas and customs, and of man’s origin and history, has brought into their true prominence, if indeed he has even noticed them in passing, the universally dominating primitive convictions: that the blood is the life; that the heart, as the blood-fountain, is the very soul of every personality; that blood-transfer is soul-transfer; that blood-sharing, human, or divine-human, secures an inter-union of natures ”

“ Blood-red were the northern lights that flashed and shimmered so wildly in the heavens that night, red as the blood that had soaked into the sawdust of a scaffold; never before in the memory of living man had aurora gleamed with hue so startling. ”

“ But among mountains, in addition to all this, large unbroken spaces of pure violet and purple are introduced in their distances; and even near, by films of cloud passing over the darkness of ravines or forests, blues are produced of the most subtle tenderness; these azures and purples passing into rose colour of otherwise wholly unattainable delicacy among the upper summits, the blue of the sky being at the same time purer and deeper than in the plains. ”

“ The skin, too, needed some beautiful colour, and there were red as well as blue flowers in the bunch; and the red flowers being most abundant in nature and in greater variety of tints, give us altogether more pleasure than their beautiful rivals in our affection.
The blue flower is associated, consciously or not, with the human blue eye; and as the floral blue is in all or nearly all instances pure and beautiful, it is like the most beautiful human eye. This association, and not the colour itself, strikes me as the true cause of the superior attraction which the blue flower has for most of us. ”

“ The eyes look at one, yet have no seeing in them, they seem to see only their own blood. For they are bloodshot till the whites are scarlet, the iris is purpled. These red, bloody eyes with their stained pupils, glancing awfully at all who enter the shrine, looking as if to see through the blood of the late brutal death, are terrible. ”