Blush

“ There was a faint blush, too, came up in her face, not like the blush of agitation, indeed, but that sort of sudden transient glow, which comes over a cheek unhackneyed to any strong sensations, upon even a slight emotion. There are few people in the world more to be pitied than women who have lost the power of blushing. ”

“ Even at the thought a gentle blush would steal Over her face, and then her lips would frame Some little word of loving, and her eyes Would brim and spill their tears, when all they saw Was the bright sun, slantwise Through burgeoning trees, and all the morning's flame Burning and quivering round her. ”

“ To our surprise the Bluestocking began to blush, and her blush is not the coy, irresponsible flushing of an ordinary girl, but a painful rush of blood to the face under stress of deep earnestness, the kind of blush which forces one to look away. ”

“ There’s a blush for won’t, and a blush for shan’t,
And a blush for having done it; ”

“ Is there any “reason in nature” why we should write exclusively about the natural blush, if the delicately acquired blush of rouge has any attraction for us? Both exist; both, I think, are charming in their way; and the latter, as a subject, has, at all events, more novelty. If you prefer your “new-mown hay” in the hayfield, and I, it may be, in a scent-bottle, why may not my individual caprice be allowed to find expression as well as yours? ”

“ A blush, indeed! What had any of them ever had to blush for in all their frozen lives? And what, in Heaven's name, had she? She sat down in the stiff mahogany rocking-chair beside her work-table and tried to collect herself. From childhood she had been taught to "collect herself"--but never before had her small sensations and aspirations been so widely scattered, diffused over so vague and uncharted an expanse. Hitherto they had lain in neatly sorted and easily accessible bundles on the high shelves of a perfectly ordered moral consciousness. ”

“ Without a blush, men made their way in the world by the means of women blushing. Such as were only beautiful gave their beauty, whence, without doubt, comes the proverb, "The most beautiful girl in the world can only give what she has." ”

“ She look’d down to blush, and she look’d up to sigh,
With a smile on her lips, and a tear in her eye. ”

“ The Circassian who can blush is more highly valued than another, because the blush is eloquent of maiden modesty and heart untainted. The fact that there is also a blush of violated modesty, a blush of shame, and of guilt, does not argue against this view, any more than the fact that we blush if, though innocent, we are accused of guilt. It is the association of ideas and of emotions that evokes the blush in such cases. ”

“ Modesty and a becoming Blush is the Fence of all Virtue; and when this is broken down by obscene talk, the Banks will overflow with impure Streams. A Rose, when it hath lost its blush, and begins to look pale, by those symptoms you may conclude that 'tis a dying. ”

“ Blushing is a purely local modification of the circulation of this kind, and it will be instructive to consider how a blush is brought about. An emotion—sometimes pleasurable, sometimes painful—takes possession of the mind; thereupon a hot flush is felt, the skin grows red, and according to the intensity of the emotion these changes are confined to the cheeks only, or extend to the "roots of the hair," or "all over." ”

“ Blush'd the first blush of coming day,
Faded the fairy band away.
They pass'd and only left behind
A lingering fragrance on the wind,
And on the lake, their haunted home,
One long white wreath of silver foam. ”

“ Moreover you are redolent of perfume, you go from one bath to another, you wage war [37] against the hair that grows in spite of you, you walk through the forum and the streets a spruce and smooth-faced rake. Your face has become the face of a harlot: you know not how to blush. ”

“ When a girl ceases to blush, she32 has lost the most powerful charm of beauty. That extreme sensibility which it indicates may be a weakness and incumbrance in our sex, as I have too often felt; but in yours it is peculiarly engaging. Pedants, who think themselves philosophers, ask why a woman should blush when she is conscious of no crime? It is a sufficient answer, that nature has made you to blush when you are guilty of no fault, and has forced us to love you because you do so.—Blushing is so far from being necessarily an attendant on guilt, that it is the usual companion of innocence. ”

“ Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive, Half wishing they were dead to save the shame. The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow; They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats, And flare up bodily, wings and all. ”

“ I wonder why people decry a masculine blush: I don't know. I immediately love the man who blushes. I am sure that he is unhackneyed; that he has not a set of meaningless, cut and dried compliments on hand, for every woman he meets ”

“ Blush, blush, n. a red glow on the face caused by shame, modesty, &c.: any reddish colour: sudden appearance.—v.i. to show shame or confusion by growing red in the face: to grow red.—n. Blush′et (Ben Jonson) , a young, modest girl.—adj. Blush′ful, full of blushes: modest—n. Blush′ing, the act of turning red: the appearance of colour upon the cheek.—p.adj. showing blushes: modest.—adv. Blush′ingly.—At the first blush, at the first glance.—To put to the blush, to cause to blush. [Prob. Scand.; cog. with A.S. blysa, a blaze. See Blaze, Blowze.] ”

“ We met in secret: mystery is to love
Like perfume to the flower; the maiden's blush
Looks loveliest when her cheek is pale with fear. ”

“ A slight blush has a rosy charm of its own, and it is only when it becomes a too diffused and deep facial Aurora borealis that it loses its charm, because suggestive of the hectic or fever flush, or the redness caused by anger, heat, violent exertion, etc., which has a physiological origin distinct from that of blushing. ”

“ They were shadows, not fuel, to love's dull'd flame.
Love once formed an amulet,
With pearls, and a rainbow, and rose-leaves set.
The pearls were pure as pearls could be,
And white as maiden purity;
The rose had the beauty and breath of soul,
And the rainbow-changes crowned the whole.
Frown on your lover one little while,
Dearer will be the light of your smile;
Let your blush, laugh, and sigh ever mingle together,
Like the bloom, sun, and clouds of the sweet spring weather.
Love never must sleep in security,
Or most calm and cold will his waking be. ”

“ One more passage, however, may be cited, as it helps to justify this long discussion of blushing by showing its special relations to Romantic Love and Personal Beauty:—
“It is plain to every one that young men and women are highly sensitive to the opinion of each other with reference to their personal appearance; and they blush incomparably more in presence of the opposite sex than in that of their own. A young man, not very liable to blush, will blush intensely at any slight ridicule of his appearance from a girl whose judgment on any important subject he would disregard. ”

“ What betraying things blushes are! Like sealing-wax in the juvenile riddle, a blush "burns to keep a secret." ”

“ Then, slowly, the change came over her, and the blood flooded into her face in the same amazing blush he had seen once before that day. ”

“ The colour caused by blushing gives brilliancy and interest to the expression of the face. In this we perceive an advantage possessed by the fair family of mankind, and which must be lost to the dark; for I can hardly believe that a blush may be seen in the negro.... Blushing assorts well with youthful and with effeminate features, while nothing is more hateful than a dog-face that exhibits no token of sensibility in the variations of colour.”
The poet Young tells us that “the man that blushes is not quite a brute;” ”

“ Such a misfortune! All the beautiful roses, that smelled so sweetly and had so many lovely blushes, are blighted and spoilt! They are grown quite yellow, as you see this one, and have no longer any fragrance! ”

“ Oh, softest is the cheek's love-ray
When seen by moonlight hours,
Other roses seek the day,
But blushes are night flowers. ”

“ So young, such wafts of perfume bringing,
Endured the brunt the world allows,
Far from the crowd and all its crushing,
Ah! how they bloomed, a garland blushing,
How green and fragrant, on my brows! ”

“ Such was the colour—when her cheek
Spoke what the lip might never speak.
The crimson flush which could confess
All that we hoped—but dared not guess.
That blush which through the world is known
To love, and to the rose alone—
A sweet companionship, which never
The poet’s dreaming eye may sever. ”

“ TO BLOSSOMS Fair pledges of a fruitful tree, Why do ye fall so fast? Your date is not so past, But you may stay yet here a-while, To blush and gently smile; ”

“ For an instant her large timid eyes are upon you; in an instant they are shrouded again, and there comes a blush so burning, that the frightened girls stay their shrill laughter, as though they had played too perilously, and harmed their gentle sister. ”

“ Its radiance of light, thou shalt then be my shrine;
I'll listen the song which the wild dove is singing,
And catch from its sweetness a lesson for mine.
And when the red sunset at even is dying,
I'll watch the last blush as it fades on the wave;
While the wind, through the shells in its low music sighing,
Will seem like the anthem peal'd over its grave.
And when the bright stars which I worship are beaming,
And writing in beauty and fate on the sky,
Then, mine own lute, be the hour for thy dreaming,
And the night-flowers will open and echo thy sigh. ”

“ Blushing is now the colour of virtue, but it was not then the colour of innocency. ”

“ And azure gleamings come through the soft boughs
Of white-flowered myrtles and the pink acacia,
And the glade is illumined suddenly
By blushes from ten thousand crimson roses,
Nature's own beautiful and fragrant lamps ”

“ Blushing is the most peculiar and the most human of all expressions. ”

“ Roses, wild roses, everywhere! So plentiful were they, they not only perfumed the air, they seemed to dye it a faint rose-hue. The colour floated abroad with the scent, and clomb, and spread, until the whole west blushed and glowed with the gathered incense of roses. And my heart fainted with longing in my bosom.
Could I but see the Spirit of the Earth, as I saw once the in dwelling woman of the beech-tree, and my beauty of the pale marble, I should be content. Content!—Oh, how gladly would I die of the light of her eyes! ”

“ That fell from the rocks round their beautiful home:
There the pomegranate blushed like the cheek of the maiden
When she hears in the distance the step of her lover,
And blushes to know it before her young friends. ”

“ That young lips breathe when love's first dreamings fly;
When blights and cankerworms, and chilling showers,
Come withering o'er the warm heart's passion-flowers.
Love! gentlest spirit! I do tell of thee,—
Of all thy thousand hopes, thy many fears,
Thy morning blushes, and thy evening tears;
What thou hast ever been, and still will be,—
Life's best, but most betraying witchery!
It is a night of summer,—and the sea
Sleeps, like a child, in mute tranquillity. ”

“ As he bends to speak she turns her head, with a deepening flush; the movement wafts to him the subtle fragrance of a white rose worn in her brown hair, and the words she longs to hear die unspoken on his lips. What is there in the fragrance of a flower that can pierce one deeper than a sword-thrust with the sweet-bitterness of memory? What kinship does it bear to the roses that blossomed in other days, in other hands that we have loved? ”

“ It was a dream of inexpressible sweetness to me and inexpressible comfort. When I woke up I had a perfume as of red roses in my mouth. I have riddled it all out for myself. I take it to mean that we shall, in spite of everything, meet again, and that I shall love you till you are old, and your hair is white, and that to me, because of our love, you will always be lovely in youth.
* * * * *
The want of you comes over me like fire, and I feel the marrow fail me in my bones. ”

“ The fair delicate skin through which the blue veins could be seen meandering, the snowy brow that seemed made for the temple of the loveliest and purest thoughts, the golden hair that lay in wreathes upon the forehead, and the blue eye whose azure depths seemed to conceal mysteries as pure and rapturing as those of heaven, made up a countenance of overpowering beauty, even without that expression, so high and seraphic, which beamed with her every word, and threw over each lineament of her face a loveliness almost divine. ”

“ Look at our hair, see how soft it is; flowers lend their fragrance to its silkiness. See our eyes wherein slumbers the sweetness of love. See our warm lips, like fruit ripened in the sun. See our firm, rounded breasts. ”

“ I would liken you to a shaft of sunlight, a withering flame—a black flame, if such there be—for your grace and ardour is even as a flame. Your step is laughter and song. Your hair is a torrent of starless night. The sun is your lover, you god. He takes joy in your perfection. ”

“ Sweet Flower, thy Blossom and thy Winding sheet!
In the Procession of SPRING there is a fine series of allegorical
Images.
Advancing SPRING profusely spreads abroad Flowers of kinds, with sweetest fragrance stor'd: Where she treads LOVE gladdens every plain; Delight on tip-toe beats her lucid train; Sweet Hope with conscious brow before her flies, Anticipating wealth from summer skies. ”

“ And the touch of thy flesh is like to the savour of lotos.
In thy hair is a perfume of ecstasy,
And a perfume of sleep,
Between thy thighs is a valley of delight,
And between thy breasts is a valley of peace. ”