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

• Brownish color and black eyes are more closely related to the sublime, blue eyes and blond color to the beautiful.
  • I Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (1764)

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)