Light itself, which every thing displays, / Shone undiscovered, till his brighter mind / Untwisted all the shining robe of day; / And, from the whiten- ing undistinguished blaze, / Collecting every ray into his kind, / To the charmed eye educed the gorgeous train / Of parent colours. First the flaming red / Sprung vivid forth; the tawny orange next; / And next delicious yellow; by whose side / Fell the kind beams of all- refreshing green. / Then the pure blue, that swells autumnal skies, / Ethereal played; and then, of sadder hue, / Emerged the deepened indigo, as when / The heavy- skirted evening droops with frost; / While the last gleamings of refracted light / Died in the fainting violet away.
—James Thomson (1700-48), To the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton.
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