Economic Basis of and Political Regulation in Bands, Tribes, Chiefdoms, and States 164
The Four Systems of Kinship Terminology, with Their Social and Economic Correlates 214
Oppositions between Liminality and Normal Social Life 241
Star Wars as a Structural Transformation of The Wizard of Oz 267
Ascent and Decline of Nations within the World System 297
What Heats, What Cools, the Earth? 306
a letter from the author
Welcome to the 17th Edition of Cultural Anthropology: Appreciating Cultural Diversity!
I wrote the first edition of this book during a time of rapid change in my favorite academic discipline— anthropology. My colleagues and I were excited about new discoveries and directions in all four of anthropology’s subfields—biological anthropology, anthropological archaeology, sociocultural anthropology, and linguistic anthropology. My goal was to write a book that would capture that excitement, addressing key changes, while also providing a solid foundation of core concepts and the basics.
Just as anthropology is a dynamic discipline that encourages new discoveries and explores the profound changes now affecting people and societies, this edition of Cultural Anthropology makes a concerted effort to keep pace with changes in the way students read and learn core content today. Our digital program, Connect Anthropology, includes assignable and assessable quizzes, exercises, and interactive activities, organized around course-specific learning objectives. Furthermore, Connect includes an interactive eBook, LearnSmart, which is an adaptive testing program, and SmartBook, the first and only truly adaptive reading experience. The tools and resources provided in Connect Anthropology are designed to engage students and enable them to improve their performance in the course. This 17th edition has benefited from feedback from about 2,000 students who worked with these tools and programs while using the 16th edition of Cultural Anthropology. We were able to flag and respond to specific areas of difficulty that students encountered, chapter by chapter. I used this extensive feedback to revise, rethink, and clarify my writing in almost every chapter. In preparing this edition, I benefited tremendously from both students’ and professors’ reactions to my book.
As I work on each new edition, it becomes ever more apparent to me that while any competent and useful text must present anthropology’s core, that text also must demonstrate anthropology’s relevance to the 21st-century world we inhabit. Accordingly, each new edition contains substantial content changes as well as a series of features that examine our changing world. For example, several “Focus on Globalization” essays in this book examine topics as diverse as world sports events, disease pandemics, the global gender gap, and the political role of new media. Several chapters contain discussions of new media, including social media. Many of the boxes titled “Appreciating Anthropology” and “Appreciating Diversity” (at least one per chapter) also present new discoveries and topics.
Each chapter begins with a discussion titled “Understanding Ourselves.” These introductions, along with examples from popular culture throughout the book, show how anthropology relates to students’ everyday lives. My overarching goal is to help students appreciate the field of cultural anthropology and the various kinds of diversity it studies. How do anthropologists think and work? Where do we go, and how do we interpret what we see? How do we step back, compare, and analyze? How does anthropology contribute to our understanding of the world? The “Appreciating Anthropology” boxes focus on the value and usefulness of anthropological research and approaches while the “Appreciating Diversity” boxes focus on various forms and expressions of human cultural diversity.
Most students who read this book will not go on to become anthropologists, or even anthropology majors. For those who do, this book should provide a solid foundation to build on. For those who don’t— that is, for most of my readers—my goal is to instill a sense of appreciation: of human diversity, of anthropology as a field, and of how anthropology can build on, and help make sense of, the experience that students bring to the classroom. May this course and this text help students think differently about, and achieve greater understanding of, their own culture and its place within our globalizing world.
Conrad
Phillip Kottak
Updates and Revisions—Informed by Student Data
Revisions to the 17th edition of Cultural Anthropology were extensively informed by student data, collected anonymously by McGraw-Hill’s LearnSmart adaptive learning system. Using this data, we were able to graphically illustrate “hot spots,” indicating content area students struggle with (see image below). This data provided feedback at the paragraph and even sentence level. Conrad Kottak relied on this data when making decisions about material to revise, update, and improve. Updates were also informed by the many excellent reviews provided by faculty at 2- and 4-year schools across the country.
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS ANTHROPOLOGY?
• Streamlined organization with clearer focus on core content
• Revised sections:
• Biological Anthropology
• Cultural Anthropology and Sociology
• Theories, Associations, and Explanations, including a new Recap to emphasize key terms
CHAPTER 2: CULTURE
• Updated discussion on Makah whaling, including the latest available information on the dispute
CHAPTER 3: METHOD AND THEORY IN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
• Revised section on “Problem-Oriented Ethnography”
• Significant rewriting and reorganizing in the theory sections
• Updates throughout, referencing the latest sources
CHAPTER 4: APPLYING ANTHROPOLOGY
• Coverage of “Early Applications” completely rewritten
• Key sections of “Development Anthropology” revised, including the discussions of equity impact and overinnovation
• “Medical Anthropology” section rewritten and reorganized, with the addition of three new subheads to group and organize content
• Updated coverage of all of the following:
• Pros and cons of Western medicine
• Health problems spawned by industrialization and globalization
• The author’s contention that Western systems would benefit from a more personal treatment of illness
CHAPTER 5: LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION
• New “Appreciating Diversity” box, “Words of the Year”
• New discussion of “the language of food”
• Updates throughout
CHAPTER 6: ETHNICITY AND RACE
• This chapter has been almost completely rewritten. Changes include the following:
• New section on the backlash to multiculturalism
• New section on the Black Lives Matter movement
• New discussion of the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Syria
• Updated statistics throughout, with the latest available figures on income, wealth, minority group poverty rates, and growth in ethnic diversity in the United States
CHAPTER 7: MAKING A LIVING
• Clarified discussion of the following topics:
• The definition of foragers and the distribution of modern foragers
• The relocation of the Basarwa San
• Social distinctions in egalitarian foraging societies
• The terms horticulture, shifting cultivation, and slash-and-burn horticulture
• How agriculture affects society and the environment
• The terms redistribution and reciprocity
• The Potlatch
CHAPTER 8: POLITICAL SYSTEMS
• Revised treatment of the following topics:
• The differences between contemporary and Stone Age hunter-gatherers
• Changes in how anthropologists view foragers
• The range of political systems associated with pastoralism and the status of pastoralism within modern nation-states.
• How states enforce laws, how states intervene in disputes, and the significance of fiscal systems in states
• Factors that curb and factors that enable public resistance
• The concepts of public and hidden transcripts
• How shame and gossip can function as effective processes of social control
CHAPTER 9: GENDER
• The chapter was heavily revised, including the following changes:
• New information on deadly aspects of gender inequality in the contemporary world, including a discussion of the case of the Pakistani girl Malala, the teenage winner of the 2014 Nobel prize
• New discussion of the increasing professionalization of the female labor force in the United States
Learn Without Limits
Connect is proven effective
McGraw-Hill Connect ® is a digital teaching and learning environment that improves performance over a variety of critical outcomes; it is easy to use; and it is proven effective. Connect® empowers students by continually adapting to deliver precisely what they need, when they need it, and how they need it, so your class time is more engaging and effective. Connect for Anthropology offers a wealth of interactive online content, including quizzes, exercises, and critical thinking questions, and “Applying Anthropology,” “Anthropology on My Own,” and “Anthropology on the Web” activities.
Connect also features these advanced capabilities
Available within Connect, SmartBook® makes study time as productive and efficient as possible by identifying and closing knowledge gaps. SmartBook is powered by the proven LearnSmart® engine, which identifies what an individual student knows and doesn’t know based on the student’s confidence level, responses to questions, and other factors. LearnSmart builds an optimal, personalized learning path for each student, so students spend less time on concepts they already understand and more time on those they don’t. As a student engages with SmartBook, the reading experience continuously adapts by highlighting the most impactful content a student needs to learn at that moment in time. This ensures that every minute spent with SmartBook is returned to the student as the most value-added minute possible. The result? More confidence, better grades, and greater success.
Connect Insight® is Connect’s new one-of-a-kind visual analytics dashboard—now available for both instructors and students—that provides at-a-glance information regarding student performance, which is immediately actionable. By presenting assignment, assessment, and topical performance results together with a time metric that is easily visible for aggregate or individual results, Connect Insight gives the user the capability to take a just-in-time approach to teaching and learning, which was never before available. Connect Insight presents data that empowers students and helps instructors improve class performance in a way that is efficient and effective.
Your Course, Your Way
McGraw-Hill Create® is a self-service website that allows you to create customized course materials using McGraw-Hill Education’s comprehensive, cross-disciplinary content and digital products. You can even access third-party content such as readings, articles, cases, videos, and more.
∙ Select and arrange content to fit your course scope and sequence.
∙ Upload your own course materials.
∙ Select the best format for your students—print or eBook.
∙ Select and personalize your cover.
∙ Edit and update your materials as often as you’d like.
Experience how McGraw-Hill Education’s Create empowers you to teach your students your way: http://www.mcgrawhillcreate.com.
McGraw-Hill Campus® is a groundbreaking service that puts world-class digital learning resources just a click away for all faculty and students. All faculty—whether or not they use a McGraw-Hill title—can instantly browse, search, and access the entire library of McGraw-Hill instructional resources and services, including eBooks, test banks, PowerPoint slides, animations, and learning objects—from any Learning Management System (LMS), at no additional cost to an institution. Users also have single sign-on access to McGraw-Hill digital platforms, including Connect, Create, and Tegrity, a fully automated lecture caption solution.
Instructor Resources
Instructor resources available through Connect for Anthropology include an Instructor’s Manual, Test Bank, Image Bank, and PowerPoint presentation for each chapter.
Acknowledgments
As always, I’m grateful to many colleagues at McGraw-Hill. Thanks to Gina Boedeker, McGraw-Hill’s managing director for anthropology, and to Rhona Robbin, lead product developer, who was especially helpful and encouraging in launching this revision. I offer particular thanks to product developer Emily Pecora, with whom I’ve had the pleasure of working on multiple titles. I always appreciate Emily’s keen editorial eye for style, language, and content, as she has helped guide me through several revisions. I thank marketing manager Kaitlyn Lombardo and McGraw-Hill’s entire team of sales reps and regional managers for the work they do in helping professors and students gain access to my books.
I’m truly grateful as well for the superb work of the following: Rick Hecker, content project manager; George Theofanopoulous, digital project manager; Tara McDermott, designer; and Lori Slattery, content licensing specialist. I offer thanks as well to Charlotte Goldman, freelance photo researcher; Amy Marks, copyeditor; and Marlena Pechan, proofreader. I’m also very grateful to Christine Gimlin, who did an expert job of transferring my changes from Word files to pdfs. Thanks as well to Scott Lukas, Lake Tahoe Community College, who created the content for the Connect products for this book; and Helen Warner, who updated the materials for this latest edition. Special thanks, too, to Professor Richard Pace, who drafted the section on social media in Brazil in Chapter 17.
I am especially indebted to the reviewers who evaluated the 16th editions of this book and my book Anthropology: Appreciating Human Diversity for their excellent suggestions, many of which I have followed. Here are their names:
Bonny Christy, Blinn College
William Donner, Kutztown University
William Doonan, Sacramento City College
Max Kirsch, Florida Atlantic University
Amy Kowal, Florida State University
Merri Mattison, Red Rocks Community College
Reece Jon McGee, Texas State University
Kare McManama-Kearin, Weber State University
Andrew Nelson, University of North Texas
Leila Rodriguez, University of Cincinnati
Richard Sattler, University of Montana
Scott Sernau, Indiana University South Bend Wayman Smith, Georgia Perimeter College
I’m also grateful to the reviewers of previous editions of this book and of my Anthropology text. Their names are as follows:
Julianna Acheson, Green Mountain College
Stephanie W. Alemán, Iowa State University
Mohammad Al-Madani, Seattle Central Community College
Maria Altemara, West Virginia University, Robert Morris University
Douglas J. Anderson, Front Range Community College
E. F. Aranyosi, University of Washington
Timi Lynne Barone, University of Nebraska, Omaha
Robert Bee, University of Connecticut
Joy A. Bilharz, SUNY at Fredonia
James R. Bindon, University of Alabama
Kira Blaisdell-Sloan, Louisiana State University
Kathleen T. Blue, Minnesota State University
Renée M. Bonzani, University of Kentucky
Daniel Boxberger, Western Washington University
Vicki Bradley, University of Houston
Lisa Kaye Brandt, North Dakota State University
Ethan M. Braunstein, Northern Arizona University
Ned Breschel, Morehead State University
Christopher A. Brooks, Virginia Commonwealth University
Peter J. Brown, Emory University
Margaret S. Bruchez, Blinn College
Vaughn M. Bryant, Texas A&M University
Andrew Buckser, Purdue University
xxiv
Richard H. Buonforte, Brigham Young University
Karen Burns, University of Georgia
Richard Burns, Arkansas State University
Mary Cameron, Auburn University
Joseph L. Chartkoff, Michigan State University
Dianne Chidester, University of South Dakota
Stephen Childs, Valdosta State University
Inne Choi, California Polytechnic State University–San Luis Obispo
Wanda Clark, South Plains College
Jeffrey Cohen, Penn State University
Fred Conquest, Community College of Southern Nevada
Barbara Cook, California Polytechnic State University–San Luis Obispo
Maia Greenwell Cunningham, Citrus College
Sean M. Daley, Johnson County Community College
Karen Dalke, University of Wisconsin–Green Bay
Norbert Dannhaeuser, Texas A&M University
Michael Davis, Truman State University
Hillary Delprete, Wagner College
Paul Demers, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Darryl de Ruiter, Texas A&M University
Robert Dirks, Illinois State University
William W. Donner, Kutztown University
Mary Durocher, Wayne State University
Paul Durrenberger, Pennsylvania State University
George Esber, Miami University of Ohio
Les W. Field, University of New Mexico
Grace Fraser, Plymouth State College
Todd Jeffrey French, University of New Hampshire, Durham
Richard H. Furlow, College of DuPage
Vance Geiger, University of Central Florida
Laurie Godfrey, University of Massachusetts–Amherst
Bob Goodby, Franklin Pierce College
Gloria Gozdzik, West Virginia University
Tom Greaves, Bucknell University
Mark Grey, University of Northern Iowa
Sharon Gursky, Texas A&M University
John Dwight Hines, University of California, Santa Barbara
Brian A. Hoey, Marshall University
Other documents randomly have different content
THE COMMON LOT.
Once, in the flight of ages past, There lived a man:—and WHO was HE?— Mortal! howe’er thy lot be cast, That Man resembled thee.
Unknown the region of his birth, 5 The land in which he died unknown: His name has perished from the earth; This truth survives alone:—
That joy and grief, and hope and fear, Alternate triumphed in his breast; 10 His bliss and woe,—a smile, a tear!— Oblivion hides the rest.
The bounding pulse, the languid limb, The changing spirits’ rise and fall, We know that these were felt by him, 15 For these are felt by all.
He suffered,—but his pangs are o’er; Enjoyed,—but his delights are fled; Had friends,—his friends are now no more; And foes,—his foes are dead. 20
He loved,—but whom he loved, the grave Hath lost in its unconscious womb: Oh she was fair!—but nought could save Her beauty from the tomb.
He saw whatever thou hast seen; 25 Encountered all that troubles thee: He was—whatever thou hast been; He is—what thou shalt be.
The rolling seasons, day and night, Sun, moon, and stars, the earth and main, 30 Erewhile his portion, life, and light, To him exist in vain.
The clouds and sunbeams, o’er his eye That once their shades and glory threw, Have left in yonder silent sky 35 No vestige where they flew.
The annals of the human race, Their ruins since the world began, Of HIM afford no other trace
Than this,—THERE LIVED A MAN! 40 James Montgomery
CLXXIII
THE HOLLY TREE.
O Reader! hast thou ever stood to see
The Holly Tree?
The eye that contemplates it well perceives Its glossy leaves
Ordered by an Intelligence so wise, 5 As might confound the atheist’s sophistries.
Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen Wrinkled and keen;
No grazing cattle through their prickly round Can reach to wound; 10
But, as they grow where nothing is to fear, Smooth and unarmed the pointless leaves appear.
I love to view these things with curious eyes, And moralize;
And in this wisdom of the Holly Tree 15 Can emblems see,
Wherewith perchance to make a pleasant rhyme, One which may profit in the after-time.
Thus, though abroad perchance I might appear Harsh and austere; 20
To those who on my leisure would intrude, Reserved and rude;— Gentle at home amid my friends I’d be, Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree.
And should my youth, as youth is apt I know, 25 Some harshness show, All vain asperities I day by day Would wear away, Till the smooth temper of my age should be Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree. 30
And as when all the summer trees are seen So bright and green, The Holly leaves a sober hue display Less bright than they; But when the bare and wintry woods we see, 35 What then so cheerful as the Holly Tree?
So serious should my youth appear among The thoughtless throng; So would I seem amid the young and gay More grave than they; 40 That in my age as cheerful I might be As the green winter of the Holly Tree. Robert Southey.
CLXXIV
THE SQUIRE’S PEW.
A slanting ray of evening light Shoots through the yellow pane:
It makes the faded crimson bright, And gilds the fringe again; The window’s gothic framework falls 5 In oblique shadows on the walls.
And since those trappings first were new, How many a cloudless day, To rob the velvet of its hue, Has come and passed away! 10 How many a setting sun hath made That curious lattice-work of shade!
Crumbled beneath the hillock green The cunning hand must be, That carved this fretted door, I ween, 15 Acorn and fleur-de-lis; And now the worm hath done her part In mimicking the chisel’s art.
In days of yore (as now we call) When the First James was king, 20 The courtly knight from yonder Hall His train did hither bring, All seated round in order due, With broidered suit and buckled shoe.
On damask cushions decked with fringe, 25 All reverently they knelt; Prayer-books, with brazen hasp and hinge, In ancient English spelt, Each holding in a lily hand, Responsive to the priest’s command. 30
Now, streaming down the vaulted aisle, The sunbeam, long and lone, Illumes the characters awhile
Of their inscription-stone: And there, in marble hard and cold, 35 The knight with all his train behold.
Brought many a distant county through, To join the final rendezvous.
And when the race is swept away, All to their dusty beds, Still shall the mellow evening ray 75 Shine gaily o’er their heads; While other faces, fresh and new, Shall fill the Squire’s deserted pew. Jane Taylor.
CLXXV
A DREAM.
Once a dream did weave a shade O’er my angel-guarded bed, That an emmet lost its way Where on grass methought I lay.
Troubled, ’wildered, and forlorn, 5 Dark, benighted, travel-worn, Over many a tangled spray, All heart-broke, I heard her say:
‘Oh, my children! do they cry, Do they hear their father sigh? 10 Now they look abroad to see, Now return and weep for me.’
Pitying, I dropped a tear: But I saw a glowworm near, Who replied, ‘What wailing wight 15 Calls the watchman of the night?
‘I am set to light the ground, While the beetle goes his round. Follow now the beetle’s hum, Little wanderer, hie thee home!’ 20
William Blake.
CLXXVI
DECEMBER MORNING.
I love to rise ere gleams the tardy light, Winter’s pale dawn; and as warm fires illume, And cheerful tapers shine around the room, Through misty windows bend my musing sight, Where, round the dusky lawn, the mansions white 5 With shutters closed peer faintly through the gloom, That slow recedes; while yon grey spires assume, Rising from their dark pile, an added height By indistinctness given—Then to decree The grateful thoughts to God, ere they unfold 10 To friendship or the Muse, or seek with glee Wisdom’s rich page. O hours more worth than gold, By whose blest use we lengthen life, and, free From drear decays of age, outlive the old! Anna Seward.
CLXXVII
THE THRUSH’S NEST.
Within a thick and spreading hawthorn bush, That overhung a molehill large and round, I heard from morn to morn a merry thrush Sing hymns of rapture, while I drank the sound With joy—and oft, an unintruding guest, 5 I watched her secret toils from day to day; How true she warped the moss to form her nest, And modelled it within with wood and clay. And by and by, like heath-bells gilt with dew, There lay her shining eggs as bright as flowers, 10 Ink-spotted over, shells of green and blue:
From mount to mount, through Cloudland, gorgeous land! Or, listening to the tide with closèd sight, 10
Be that blind Bard, who on the Chian strand, By those deep sounds possessed with inward light, Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssee
Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
EVENING.
It is a beauteous evening, calm and free; The holy time is quiet as a nun Breathless with adoration; the broad sun Is sinking down in its tranquillity; The gentleness of heaven is on the sea: 5 Listen! the mighty Being is awake, And doth with his eternal motion make A sound like thunder—everlastingly. Dear child! dear girl! that walkest with me here, If thou appear’st untouched by solemn thought, 10 Thy nature is not therefore less divine: Thou liest in Abraham’s bosom all the year; And worshipp’st at the temple’s inner shrine, God being with thee when we know it not.
William Wordsworth.
CLXXXI
THE WALL-FLOWER.
I will not praise the often-flattered rose, Or, virgin-like, with blushing charms half seen, Or when, in dazzling splendour, like a queen, All her magnificence of state she shows; No, nor that nun-like lily which but blows 5
Beneath the valley’s cool and shady screen; Nor yet the sun-flower, that with warrior mien Still eyes the orb of glory where it glows; But thou, neglected Wall-flower! to my breast And Muse art dearest, wildest, sweetest flower! 10
To whom alone the privilege is given Proudly to root thyself above the rest; As Genius does, and from thy rocky tower Lend fragrance to the purest breath of heaven. Thomas Doubleday.
CLXXXII
THE SEA-CAVE.
Hardly we breathe, although the air be free: How massively doth awful Nature pile The living rock, like some cathedral aisle, Sacred to Silence and the solemn Sea. How that clear pool lies sleeping tranquilly, 5 And under its glassed waters seems to smile, With many hues, a mimic grove the while Of foliage submarine, shrub, flower, and tree. Beautiful scene! and fitted to allure
The printless footsteps of some sea-born maid, 10 Who here, with her green tresses disarrayed, ’Mid the clear bath, unfearing and secure, May sport at noontide in the caverned shade— Cold as the shadow—as the waters pure. Thomas Doubleday.
CLXXXIII
HOLY THURSDAY.
’Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean, The children walking two and two, in red, and blue, and green;
That shook her ægis o’er the land. And throned immortal by his side, A woman sits with eye sublime,— 20 Aspasia, all his spirit’s bride; But, if their solemn love were crime, Pity the Beauty and the Sage— Their crime was in their darkened age.
He perished, but his wreath was won— 25 He perished in his height of fame; Then sunk the cloud on Athens’ sun, Yet still she conquered in his name. Filled with his soul, she could not die; Her conquest was posterity 30 George Croly. CLXXXV LOVE.
All thoughts, all passions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame, All are but ministers of Love, And feed his sacred flame.
Oft in my waking dreams do I 5 Live o’er again that happy hour, When midway on the mount I lay, Beside the ruined tower.
The moonshine stealing o’er the scene, Had blended with the lights of eve; 10 And she was there, my hope, my joy, My own dear Genevieve!
She leaned against the armèd man, The statue of the armèd knight; She stood and listened to my lay, 15
In green and sunny glade,—
There came and looked him in the face An angel beautiful and bright; 50 And that he knew it was a fiend, This miserable Knight!
And that unknowing what he did, He leaped amid a murderous band, And saved from outrage worse than death 55 The Lady of the Land;—
And how she wept, and clasped his knees, And how she tended him in vain; And ever strove to expiate The scorn that crazed his brain;— 60
And that she nursed him in a cave; And how his madness went away, When on the yellow forest-leaves A dying man he lay;—
His dying words—but when I reached 65 That tenderest strain of all the ditty, My faltering voice and pausing harp Disturbed her soul with pity!
All impulses of soul and sense Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve; 70 The music and the doleful tale, The rich and balmy eve;
And hopes, and fears that kindle hope, An undistinguishable throng, And gentle wishes long subdued, 75 Subdued and cherished long!
She wept with pity and delight, She blushed with love and virgin shame; And like the murmur of a dream,
I heard her breathe my name. 80
Her bosom heaved—she stepped aside, As conscious of my look she stept— Then suddenly, with timorous eye, She fled to me and wept
She half enclosed me with her arms, 85 She pressed me with a meek embrace; And bending back her head, looked up, And gazed upon my face.
’Twas partly love, and partly fear, And partly ’twas a bashful art, 90 That I might rather feel, than see, The swelling of her heart.
I calmed her fears, and she was calm, And told her love with virgin pride; And so I won my Genevieve, 95 My bright and beauteous Bride. Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
CLXXXVI
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY.
She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellowed to that tender light 5 Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less, Had half impaired the nameless grace, Which waves in every raven tress, Or softly lightens o’er her face; 10
Where thoughts serenely sweet express, How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek, and o’er that brow, So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, The smiles that win, the tints that glow, 15 But tell of days in goodness spent, A mind at peace with all below, A heart whose love is innocent!
Lord Byron.
CLXXXVII SONG.
Oh welcome, bat and owlet gray, Thus winging low your airy way! And welcome, moth and drowsy fly, That to mine ear come humming by! And welcome, shadows dim and deep, 5 And stars that through the pale sky peep! O welcome all! to me ye say, My woodland Love is on her way.
Upon the soft wind floats her hair; Her breath is in the dewy air; 10 Her steps are in the whispered sound, That steals along the stilly ground. O dawn of day, in rosy bower, What art thou to this witching hour?
O noon of day, in sunshine bright, 15 What art thou to the fall of night?
