Definition of "swart"

Men schalle then sone se / Att mydday hytt shalle swarte be

1400s: Thomas Occleve, Hymns to the Virgin

A nation strange, with visage swart

1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie

Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious,

c. 1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Iohn”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act III, scene i]

Of shades , and wanton winds , and gushing brooks , On whose fresh lap the swart - star sparely looks

1637, John Milton, “Lycidas”, in Poems of Mr. John Milton, […], London: […] Ruth Raworth for Humphrey Mosely, […], published 1646

I'll choose a gaoler, whose swart monstrous faceShall be a hell to look upon […]

1819, John Keats, Otho the Great, act II, scene I, verses 91-92

The merry soldiers footing it with the swart savage maids

1836, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Old Ticonderoga

The keeping eunuchs were at back, solemn in stately rows, bespeared and bescimitared, the Danish, Irish, and German of their countenances lost in the daub which made them swart.

1905, Samuel Major Gardenhire, The Silence of Mrs. Harrold - Page 277

[…] unpierced everWith glitter of sun raysNor with stars stretched, nor looking back from heavenSwartest night stretched over wretched men there.

1925, Ezra Pound, Canto I

Suddenly the swart figure of Time stood up before the gods, with both hands dripping with blood and a red sword dangling idly from his fingers, and said: “Sardathrion is gone! I have overthrown it!”

1906, Lord Dunsany , London: William Heineman, page 4

[…] the heate of the Sun, whose fervor may swarte a living part, and even black a dead or dissolving flesh,

1646, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica

Howbeit where the rocks and quarrie grounds are, I take the swart of the earth to be so thin, that no tree of anie greatnesse, other than shrubs and bushes, is able to grow or prosper long therein for want of sufficient moisture wherewith to feed them with fresh humour, or at the leastwise of mould […]

1587, Raphael Holinshed, Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland‎