CHAPTER SIX
Wooed by the June day’s fervent breath,
Violets opened their violet eyes.
—LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.
The wind, that poet of the elements,
Tonight comes whistling down our tropic lanes,
And wakes the slumbrous hours with sweet refrains.
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Before the pilgrim minstrel violets place
The purple censers of their fervent youth.
—MARY ASHLEY TOWNSEND.
Now in snowdrops pure and pale
Breaks the sere grass; the violet rends her veil.
—HENRY G. HEWLETT.
The violet’s charms I prize, indeed,
So modest ’tis, and fair.
—JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE.
Seek the bank where flowering elders crowd,
Where scattered wild the lily of the vale
Its balmy essence breathes; where cowslips hang
The dewy head, where purple violets lurk
With all the lowly children of the shade.
—JAMES THOMSON.
So then the world’s repeating its old story?
Once more, thank God, its fairest page we turn!
The violets and mayflowers, like the glory
Of gold and color in old missals, burn
With fadeless shimmering;
These are its headings and vignettes. The heart
Beats quicker when the Book of Life apart
Falls at the page of Spring!
—JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE.
Currents of fragrance, from the orange-tree,
And sward of violets, breathing to and fro,
Mingle, and wandering out upon the sea,
Refresh the idle boatman where they blow.
—WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
Close by the roots of moss-grown stumps,
The sweetest and the first to blow,
The blue-eyed violets, in clumps,
Kiss one another as they grow.
—ANONYMOUS.
The purple heath and golden broom
On moory mountains catch the gale,
O’er lawns the lily sheds perfume,
The violet in the vale.
—JAMES MONTGOMERY.
She who sung so gently to the lute
Her dream of home, steals timidly away,
Shrinking as violets do in summer’s ray.
—THOMAS MOORE.
Lead me where amid the tranquil vale
The broken streamlet flows in silver light;
And I will linger when the gale
O’er the bank of violets sighs,
Listening to hear its softened sounds arise.
—ROBERT SOUTHEY.
In lower pools that see
All their marges clothed all around
With the innumerable lily;
Whence the golden-girdled bee
Flits through flowering rush to fret
White or duskier violet.
—ALGERNON C. SWINBURNE.
Blue violets, blithe violets,
Who that is human e’er forgets
Your brightness and your blithesomeness,
Your innocent meek tenderness,
That e’er hath stood in budding wood
And seen you at his feet,
Like rarest elves that deck themselves
In fairyhood complete,
Though blue as mist the sun has kissed
In valleys wild and sweet?
—EMILY S. OAKEY.
Violets, sweet tenants of the shade,
In purple’s richest pride arrayed,
Your errand here fulfil;
Go bid the artist’s simple stain
Your lustre imitate in vain,
And match your Master’s skill.
—ANONYMOUS.
They are the nation of the bees,
Born from the breath of flowers.
Low in the violet’s breast of blue
For treasured food they sink;
They know the flowers that hold the dew
For their small race to drink.
—ROBERT STEPHEN HAWKER.
Sweet-brier, leaning on the crag
That the lady-fern hides under;
Harebells, violets white and blue:
Who has sweeter flowers, I wonder?
—LUCY LARCOM.
Violet, delicate, sweet,
Down in the deep of the wood,
Hid in thy still retreat,
Far from the sound of the street,
Man and his merciless mood.
—COSMO MONKHOUSE.
I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows,
Where ox-lips and the nodding violet grows.
—WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
Under foot the violet,
Crocus and hyacinth, with rich inlay,
Broidered the ground.
—JOHN MILTON.
In my veins a music as of boughs
When the cool aspen-fingers of the rain
Feel for the eyelids of the earth in spring.
In every vein quick life; within my soul
The meekness of some sweet eternity
Forgot; and in my eyes soft violet-thoughts
That widen’d in the eye-ball to the light,
And peep’d, and trembled chilly back to the soul
Like leaves of violets closing.
—ROBERT BUCHANAN.
A little child with wondering, wide blue eyes
Shining with ecstasy, yet dimmed with tears,
As though a sudden joy strove with her fears
Only half conquered, while a sweet surprise
Like the first radiant glow of dawning skies
In the uplifted, wistful face appears;
Her tiny foot advanced, as one who nears
The gates of some long-wished-for Paradise,—
With parted lips the timid maiden stands
Clothed in her childish robe of spotless white;
Close to her bosom, in her little hands,
Clasping a knot of violets, all bright
With morning dew, and shyly whispering
In tones of bird and streamlet: “I am Spring!”
—WILLIS BOYD ALLEN.
Now boys and laughing girls pluck violets
And all the dainty wildflowers of the field.
—OVID.
She is so noble, firm and true,
I drink truth from her eyes,
As violets gain the heavens’ own blue
In gazing at the skies.
—JOHN HAY.
The violet in her greenwood bower
Where birchen boughs with hazels mingle,
May boast itself the fairest flower
In glen, or copse, or forest dingle.
—SIR WALTER SCOTT.
The lone violet which for love’s own sake
Its life exhales in pure unconscious good,
Some sunless glen a glowing shrine to make,
With urn of incense in the solitude.
—FRANCES L. MACE.
The wild rose sends a honeyed breath
To woo the bee from neighboring wold;
The violet holds its dainty cup
To catch the morning’s earliest gold.
—W. M. L. JAY.
Her passions the shy violet
From Hafiz never hides.
Love-longings of the raptured bird
The bird to him confides.
—RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
They knew me not,—blue flower, blue eyes;
She, careless, passed me when we met;
The tender glance which I would prize
Above all things, the violet
Received, and I went on my way,
Companioned with the cheerless day.
—HARRISON ROBERTSON.
Like some immortal heathen thing,
All fresh with bloom, with odor sweet,
With brook and bird and breeze in tune,
The beautiful bright earth of June
Moves to the fullness of her noon,
While serving sunbeams round her fling
The purple violets as they fleet.
—HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.
Run, little rivulet, run!
Sing of the flowers, every one,—
Of the delicate harebell and violet blue;
Of the red mountain rosebud, all dripping with dew.
—LUCY LARCOM.
Safe from the storm and the heat,
Breathing of beauty and good,
Fragrantly, under thy hood,
Violet!
—COSMO MONKHOUSE.
O violets, blue-eyed violets!
Scented with sweetest breath,
You seem, as I stoop to pluck you,
To whisper, “There is no death.”
—CAROLINE A. SOULE.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A shadowy nook, where half afraid
Of their own loveliness, some violets lie.
—OSCAR WILDE.