wave
By comparison, you ain’t never been blue

Origin of blue

Estampe XLIV: the break in the clouds

The fabrication of sapphire
but to my taske. Neptune besids the sway
of every salt flood & each ebbing streame
tooke in by lot twixt high, & neather Jove
imp̳iall rule of all the sea-girt Isles
that like to rich & various gems inlay
the unadorned bosome of ye deepe
wch he to grace his tributarie gods
by course committs to severall goverment
and give them leave to weare their saphire crowns
and weild thire little tridents, but this Isle
the greatest & the best of all the maine
he quarters to his blu-hair’d dieties
Milton, A Mask. Poems, Reproduced in Facsimile from the Manuscript in Trinity College, Cambridge. Menston Ilkley: Scolar Press, 1973. The line through the character p̳ indicates an abbreviation; in this case, an abbreviation of the word “imperial.”