Blee

Then the captain, young Lord Leigh, with his eyes so grey of blee,— / Toll slowly.

IT was a Mothering Sunday ; / The sky was clear to see / Above the white, white snowdrop, / And the crocus of golden blee.

The captain wonderful to see / With eyes a-change in depth and blee; / A-change, a-change for ever and aye, / Blue, and purple, and black, and gray; / And hair like the weed that finds a home / In the depth of a trail of white sea-foam.

1913, Francis Thompson, "Stolen Fruit of Eden-Tree (‘The Schoolmaster for God’)", in Brigid M. Boardman (ed.), The Poems of Francis Thompson: A New Edition, Continuum, 2001, lines 59 to 64. The fruit thereof is fair and fine, / And golden of its blee, / That well the Son of God might think / It came of Paradise—tree, / Nor deem how its root with cold Pit-fire / Is suckled evilly.

"Live, live," and "Here, here," the blackbird / From the top of the bare ash-tree, / Over the acres whistles / With beak of yellow blee.

"The Felon Sow of Rokeby and the Freers of Richmond", in Christopher Clarkson, The History of Richmond, in the County of York, Thomas Bowman (publ., 1821, appendix, cvii. The sew she would not Latin heare, / But rudely rushed at the Frear, / That he blinked all his blee ; / And when she would have taken her hold, / The Fryar leaped as Jesus wold, / And bealed him with a tree.

"The Gay Goss-hawk", The poetical works of Sir Walter Scott: first series, containing Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Sir Tristrem, and Dramatic Pieces, Baudry's European Library (publ.), 1838, page 189 (glossed as “bloom”). And pale, pale grew her rosy cheeck, / That was sae bright of blee,⁴ / And she seem'd to be as surely dead / As any one could be.

Thereupon sat a lady bright of blee, with brow beaming brilliancy, the dream of philosophy, whose eyes were fraught with Babel's gramarye and her eyebrows were arched as for archery; her breath breathed ambergris and perfumery and her lips were sugar to taste and carnelian to see.

1927, P. Geyl (tr.), The Tale of Beatrice, Martinus Nijhoff (publ.), page 5. So there they sat a long long time, / Nor could I tell you in my rhyme / How oft their cheeks did change their blee.

I am thrilled half cosmically through by cryptophantic surgings / Till the rhythmic hills roar silent through a spongious kind of blee: / And earth's soul yawns disembowelled of her pancreatic organs, / Like a madrepore if mesmerized, in rapt catalepsy.