Eye colour

A queen, with swarthy cheeks and bold black eyes / Brow-bound with burning gold ~ Alfred Tennyson

Down-dropp’d brown eyes, so tender! ~ Thomas Ashe

Eye colour is a polygenic phenotypic trait in many animals. In humans, the pigmentation of the iris varies from light brown to black, depending on the concentration of melanin in the iris.

Quotes

Dark eyes

• Sweet poets of the gentle antique line,
    That made the hue of beauty all eterne,
    And gave earth’s melodies a silver turn,—
  Where did you steal your art so right divine?—
  Sweetly ye memoried every golden twine
    Of your ladies’ tresses:—teach me how to spurn
    Death’s lone decaying and oblivion stern
  From the sweet forehead of a lady mine.
  The golden clusters of enamouring hair
    Glow’d in poetic pictures sweetly well;—
  Why should not tresses dusk, that are so fair
    On the live brow, have an eternal spell
  In poesy?—dark eyes are dearer far
    Than orbs that mock the hyacinthine-bell.
  • J. H. Reynolds, The Garden of Florence (1821)

• Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
    Our virgins dance beneath the shade—
  I see their glorious black eyes shine; ...
  • Lord Byron, "The Isles of Greece", Don Juan, Canto 3

• Although her eyes be not of blue,
    Nor fair her locks, like English lasses,
  How far its own expressive hue
    The languid azure eye surpasses!
  Prometheus-like, from heaven she stole
    The fire that through those silken lashes
  In darkest glances seems to roll,
    From eyes that cannot hide their flashes: ...
  • Lord Byron, "The Girl of Cadiz" (1832)

• I turning saw, throned on a flowery rise,
  One sitting on a crimson scarf unroll’d;
  A queen, with swarthy cheeks and bold black eyes,
  Brow-bound with burning gold.
  • Alfred Tennyson, "A Dream of Fair Women" (1833, 1842)

• The Musmee has brown velvet eyes
    Curtain’d with satin, sleepily;
  You wonder if those lids would rise
    The newest, strangest sight to see;
  But when she chatters, laughs, or plays
    Kôto, biwa, or samisen,
  No jewel gleams with brighter rays
    Than flash from those dark lashes then.
  • Sir Edwin Arnold, "The Musmee",
    Daily Alta California, 84:32 (1 February 1891)

• O sweet brown hat, brown hair, brown eyes,
  Down-dropp’d brown eyes, so tender!
  • Thomas Ashe, "Meet We no Angels, Pansie?"

• O dark brown eyes! O tangles of dark hair!
  • J. A. Symonds Jr., "Venice"

• ‘Eyes so black they draw one trembling near,
  Brown eyes, caverns flooded with a tear,
  Cloudless eyes, blue eyes so windy clear—’
          ‘O look at me!’
  • Thomas Sturge Moore, "A Duet",
    The Vinedresser, and Other Poems (1899)

Light eyes

See also: Blue eyes

• And how she’d open her green eyes,
  As if in some immense surprise,
  • Walter de la Mare, "Miss Loo",
    The Listeners, and Other Poems (1912)

• So stir the fire and pour the wine,
  And let those sea-green eyes divine
  Pour their love-madness into mine:
  • Mortimer Collins, "To F. C." (1875)

• She was a sharp-jawed, pout-lipped beauty and her eyes were green as scum.
  • Michael Moorcock, The Golden Barge (1979)