“And ladies of the Hesperides, that seemed Fairer than feigned of old, or fabled since Of fairy damsels met in forest wide By knights of Logres, or of Lyones, Lancelot, or Palleas, or Pellenore.”

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In the original, l’aer perso , the perse air. Dante, Convito , IV 20, defines perse as “a color mixed of purple and black, but the black predominates.” Chaucer’s “ Doctour of Phisike ” in the Canterbury Tales , Prologue 441, wore this color:⁠—