“I never saw more perfect loveliness.
It ask'd, it had no aid from dress: her robe
Was white, and simply gather'd in such folds
As suit a statue: neck and arms were bare;
The black hair was unbound, and like a veil
Hung even to her feet; she held a lute,
And, as she paced the ancient gallery, waked
A few wild chords, and murmur'd low sweet words,
But scarcely audible, as if she thought
Rather than spoke:—the night, the solitude,
Fill'd the young Pythoness with poetry.”

“The maiden---pure and without stain--lay sleeping on the small couch that occupied one corner of the closet. Her fair limbs were enshrouded in the light folds of a night-robe, and she lay in an attitude of perfect repose, one glowing cheek resting upon her uncovered arm, while over the other, waved the loosened curls of her glossy hair. The parting lips disclosed her teeth, white as ivory, while her youthful bosom came heaving up from the folds of her night-robe, like a billow that trembles for a moment in the moonlight, and then is suddenly lost to view. She lay there in all the ripening beauty of maidenhood, the light falling gently over her young limbs, their outlines marked by the easy folds of her robe, resembling in their roundness and richness of proportion, the swelling fulness of the rose-bud that needs but another beam of light, to open it into its perfect bloom.”

“Her hair is smoldering. Her face was smudged with soot. She had a cut on her arms, her dress was torn, and she was missing a boot. Beautiful.”

“And the redheaded girl from St. Louis who always asked about the Filipinos…Endlessly she spoke of the Filipinos, pitied them, thought them so brave in the face of prejudice. One day she was gone, and another day I saw her again, walking the streets, her copper hair catching sunbeams, a short Filipino holding her arm. He was very proud of her. His padded shoulders and tight waisted suit were the ultimate of tenderloin fashion, but even with the high leather heels he was a foot shorter than she.”

“The appearance of [Virtue] was far different: her hair, seeking no borrowed charm from ordered locks, grew freely above her forehead; her eyes were steady; in face and gait she was more like a man; she showed a cheerful modesty; and her tall stature was set off by the snow-white robe she wore.”
[Virtutis] dispar habitus: frons hirta nec umquam composita mutata coma, stans vultus, et ore incessuque viro propior laetique pudoris celsa umeros niveae fulgebat stamine pallae.

“He folded his fear into a perfect rose. He held it out in the palm of his hand. She took it from him and put it in her hair.”

“She rose and looked at me with delirious black eyes, black and wanton and in a dream, her neck stretched and defining the bulging cords at her throat. she had nothing to say with her lips, but the ghastly cast of her face, the teeth too white and too big now, the frightened smile, these spoke too loudly of the horror shrouding her days and nights…As I walked toward the bed, she pulled up her knees, slipping into a crouched frightened position, as though she expected me to strike her.”

“There was a basket at her feet. She reached into it and lifted out the head of a young woman, a marquise. She wore Bourbon white to her death, but wears the tricolor now - white cheeks, blue lips, red dripping from her neck. Long live the revolution.”

“With her braided hair and white dress, she seemed to glow in the moonlight.”

“The woman is perfected
Her dead

Body wears the smile of accomplishment,
The illusion of a Greek necessity

Flows in the scrolls of her toga,
Her bare

Feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over.

Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
One at each little

Pitcher of milk, now empty.
She has folded

Them back into her body as petals
Of a rose close when the garden

Stiffens and odors bleed
From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.

The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.

She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag.”