CHAPTER ELEVEN
“All nature mourns,” I said; “November wild
Hath torn the fairest pages from her book.”
But suddenly a wild bird overhead
Poured forth a strain so strangely clear and sweet,
It seemed to bring me back the skies of May,
And wake the sleeping violets at my feet.
Then long I pondered o’er the poet’s words,
“The loss of beauty is not always loss,”
Till like the voice of love they soothed my pain,
And gave me strength to bear again my cross.
—ALBERT LAIGHTON.
The violet’s gone,
The first-born child of the early sun;
With us she is but a winter’s flower,
The snow on the hills cannot blast her bower,
And she lifts up her dewy eye of blue
To the youngest sky of the self-same hue.
—LORD BYRON.
I picked thee violets
Upon a morn when the white mist
Went trailing down the leas and made
A gauzy scarf to twine and twist
About the feet of the blue hills.
—MARY F. FAXON.
Between her breasts that never yet felt trouble
A bunch of violets full-blown and double
Serenely sleep.
—JOHN KEATS.
Sweetest Echo, sweetest nymph, that liv’st unseen
Within thy aery shell,
By slow Meander’s argent green,
And in the violet-embroidered vale.
—JOHN MILTON.
Even the tiny violet can make
Her little circle sweet as love.
—GRACE GREENWOOD.
And Helen breathed the scent of violets, blown
Along the bosky shores.
—BAYARD TAYLOR.
There her head the golden lily rears,
The soft-eyed violet sheds her odorous tears.
—NICHOLAS MITCHELL.
I used to go and watch them,
Both night and morning, too:—
It was my tears, I fancy,
That kept the violets blue.
—ADELAIDE PROCTOR.
My girl hath violet eyes and yellow hair,
A soft hand, like a lady’s, soft and fair,
A sweet face pouting in a white straw bonnet,
A tiny foot, and little boot upon it.
—ROBERT BUCHANAN.
Here the first violets
Perhaps will bud unseen,
And a dove, maybe,
Return to nestle here.
—CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.
Gold violets, bright violets,
The sparkling dew at sunrise wets,
And doth with nectar overbrim;
Lustre no cloudy day can dim;
The golden sun doth shine upon
And call his children rare;
The yellow-bird hath sometimes stirred
Drawn downward unaware.
—EMILY S. OAKEY.
Lay her in lilies and in violets.
—EDMUND SPENSER.
The violet’s blue,
The rose bloom’s red,—and friends are tried and true;
The blossoms on the boughs are white in spring,
The wind is soft, the birds spread joyous wing,
And soar and wheel in the blue sky, and sing,
Because—because I love you.
—FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT.
In languid luxury soft she glides
Encircled by the azure tides,
Like some fair lily, faint with weeping,
Upon a bed of violets sleeping.
—THOMAS MOORE.
E’en now what affection the violet awakes;
What loved little islands, twice seen in their lakes,
Can the wild water-lily restore!
—THOMAS CAMPBELL.
Then by the enchantress Fancy led,
On violet banks I lay my head.
—JAMES MONTGOMERY.
The air is sweet with violets running wild
’Mid broken friezes and fallen capitals.
—SAMUEL ROGERS.
Mistress violet, mistress violet,
I want your tender and true eyes!
For mine are as cold and as black as jet,
And I want your heavenly blue eyes!
Modest violet, maiden violet,
Pray, can I borrow your blue eyes?
—ALICE CARY.
Flowers were the couch,
Pansies and violets, and asphodels,
And hyacinths, earth’s freshest, softest lap.
—JOHN MILTON.
Flowers, of such as keep
Their fragrant tissues and their heavenly hues
Fresh-bathed forever in eternal dews—
The violet with her low-drooped eye,
For learned modesty.
—SIDNEY LANIER.
Before the urchin well could go,
She stole the whiteness of the snow;
And more—the whiteness to adorn,
She stole the blushes of the morn:
Stole all the sweets that ether sheds
On primrose buds or violet beds.
If lovers, Cupid, are thy care,
Exert thy vengeance on this fair;
To trial bring her stolen charms,
And let her prison be my arms.
—CHARLES WYNDHAM.
Thine old-world eyes—each one a violet—
Big as the baby rose that is thy mouth—
Sets me a-dreaming. Have our eyes not met
In childhood—in a garden of the South?
—HENRY A. BEERS.
May his soft foot, where it treads,
Gardens thence produce, and meads,
And those meddowes full be set
With the rose and violet.
—ROBERT HERRICK.
I remember, I remember,
The roses, red and white,
The violets and the lily-cups—
Those flowers made of light.
—THOMAS HOOD.
The light drop of dew
That glows in the violet’s eye,
In the splendor of morn, to the fugitive view,
May rival a star in the sky.
—JAMES MONTGOMERY.
I saw thee weep—the big bright tear
Came o’er that eye of blue:
And then methought it did appear
A violet dropping dew.
—LORD BYRON.
Oh Stream of Life! the violet springs
But once beside thy bed;
But one brief summer, on thy path,
The dews of heaven are shed.
—WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
Whate’er the baffling power
Sent anger and earthquake, and a thousand ills—
It made the violet flower,
And the wide world with breathless beauty thrills.
—RICHARD WATSON GILDER.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The morning star of all the flowers
The virgin, virgin violet.
—LORD BYRON.