Light skin

Her lithe figure shimmered ivory beneath the moon. ~ Robert E. Howard

Light skin, also called fair skin in older literature, is a human skin colour. Humans with light skin pigmentation have skin with low amounts of eumelanin, and possess fewer melanosomes than humans with dark skin pigmentation. People with light skin are often called white.

Quotes

Prose

• Her lithe figure shimmered ivory beneath the moon.
  • Robert E. Howard, "Queen of the Black Coast", Weird Tales (May 1934)

• Before him, swaying like a sapling in the wind, stood a woman. Her body was like ivory to his dazed gaze, and save for a light veil of gossamer, she was naked as the day. Her slender bare feet were whiter than the snow they spurned. ... Her full red lips smiled, and from her slender feet to the blinding crown of her billowy hair, her ivory body was as perfect as the dream of a god.
  • Robert E. Howard, "The Frost-Giant's Daughter", The Coming of Conan (1953)

• It is the colour of a bleached skull, his flesh; and the long hair which flows below his shoulders is milk-white.
  • Michael Moorcock, Elric of Melniboné (1972)

Verse

• Her bosom gleams, her neck is marbly bright,
  And white as silvery Thetis’ are her toes:
  • Rufinus, Anth. Pal. v. 48. Translated by W. S. Marris (1938)

• A wayle whyt ase whalles bon; ...
  ('A beauty white as whale's bone')
  • Harley Lyrics, no. 36.

• Sir Thopas wex a doghty swayn,
  Whyt was his face as payndemayn,
    His lippès rede as rose;
  His rode is lyk scarlet in grayn,
  And I yow telle in good certayn,
    He hadde a semely nose.
  • Geoffrey Chaucer, Sir Thopas, First Fit

• Fair as an Ivory Column’s tow’ring Height,
  Her lofty Neck advances to the Sight.
  • Samuel Croxall, The Fair Circassian (1729)

• Her cheeks were rosy, red and white,
    Her e’en were bonnie blue,
  Her looks were like Aurora bright,
    Her lips like dropping dew.
  • Robert Crawford, "Doun the Burn, Davie"

• His plump white arms and shoulders, enough white
     For Venus’ pearly bite;
  • John Keats, "Song of the Indian Maid", Endymion (1818)

• The Ethiop gods have Ethiop lips,
    Bronze cheeks, and woolly hair;
  The Grecian gods are like the Greeks,
    As keen-eyed, cold and fair.
  • Walter Bagehot, Literary Studies, II

• The ivory body of that rare young slave with his pomegranate mouth!
  • Oscar Wilde, The Sphinx (1894)