Some range the colours as they parted fly, / Clear- pointed to the philosophic eye; / The flaming red, that pains the dwelling gaze, / The stainless, lightsome yellow’s gilding rays; / The clouded orange, that betwixt them glows, / And to kind mixture tawny lustre owes; / All- chearing green, that gives the spring its dye; / The bright transparent blue, that robes the sky; / And indico, which shaded light displays, / And violet, which in the view decays.
—Richard Savage, The Wanderer, quoted by Marjorie Hope Nicolson in Newton Demands the Muse, 1946.
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