Writers have long employed the color sapphire to evoke feelings of depth, brilliance, and otherworldly majesty. For example, sapphire is used to capture the luminous quality of eyes, as in descriptions where a character’s gaze is compared to the clear, sparkling essence of sapphire ([1], [2]). The color also paints vast, celestial scenes—the “sapphire vault” of the sky ([3]) and expansive bodies of water that shimmer with an intense blue glow, as when the sun sails through a “sapphire sea” ([4], [5]). At times, sapphire becomes a metaphor for the grandeur of nature itself, with landscapes such as the Mediterranean recast as an immense, gleaming sapphire ([6]) or the fading light of day evoking a “sapphire dusk” ([7]). Even the heavens are not spared, being rendered in tones of “clear sapphire” that imbue the narrative with ethereal beauty ([8]). In these ways, sapphire serves as a powerful and evocative symbol throughout literature.
- Her eyes are like the sapphire of a noon-day heaven.
— from My Fire Opal, and Other Tales by Sarah Warner Brooks
- So sweet, so lovely, and so mild as she, Adorn’d with beauty’s grace and virtue’s store: Her goodly eyes, like sapphire, shining bright.
— from The Gallery of Portraits: with Memoirs. Volume 4 (of 7) by Arthur Thomas Malkin
- An hour of mortal agony went by; the sun sank slowly to rest, and a few stars brightened the sapphire vault above him.
— from Prince Eugene and His Times by L. (Luise) Mühlbach
- And over me unrolls on high The splendid scenery of the sky, Where through a sapphire sea the sun Sails like a golden galleon.
— from The Turquoise Story Book: Stories and Legends of Summer and Nature
- Do you know Whittier’s beautiful poem, The Prayer of Agassiz , which begins:— “On the isle of Penikese Ringed about by sapphire seas.”
— from The Fall of the Year by Dallas Lore Sharp
- Everywhere the Mediterranean gleamed like an immense sapphire, flecked here and there with white fire.
— from Chance in Chains: A Story of Monte Carlo by Guy Thorne
- One by one they faded into the sapphire dusk of April.
— from Carnival by Compton MacKenzie
- Overhead the sky was clear sapphire.
— from The Spider's Web by Reginald Wright Kauffman