CHAPTER THREE
The brown buds thicken on the trees,
Unbound, the free streams sing,
As March leads forth, across the leas,
The wild and windy spring.
Where in the fields the melted snow
Leaves hollows warm and wet,
Ere many days will sweetly blow
The first blue violet.
—ELIZABETH AKERS ALLEN.
Along the wood-paths, warm and wet,
Springs up the frail wood-violet.
—JAMES BENJAMIN KENYON.
The wild
Winds clash and clang, and broken boughs are piled
At feet of writhing trees. The violets raise
Their heads without affright, without amaze,
And sleep through all the din, as sleeps a child.
—HELEN HUNT JACKSON.
Violet is for faithfulness,
Which in me shall abide.
—ANONYMOUS.
Such sweet prophetic gladness as we feel
When first we find beneath the bare spring hills
So lately circled by the whirling snows,
The crocus peeping from the withered leaves;
When first we see the lingering day of flowers
Dawning in violets blue.
—GRACE GREENWOOD.
The violet varies from the lily as far
As oak from elm.
—ALFRED TENNYSON.
Some wear the lily’s stainless white
And some the rose of passion,
And some the violet’s heavenly blue,
But each in its own fashion.
—HENRY VAN DYKE.
Beauty clear and fair
Where the air
Rather like a perfume dwells;
Where the violet and the rose
Their blue veins and blush disclose
And come to honor nothing else.
—SAMUEL FLETCHER.
No tree unfolds its timid bud,
Chill pours the hillside’s chilling flood,
The tuneless forest all is dumb—
Whence then, fair violet, didst thou come?
—GOODRICH.
All flowers died when Eve left Paradise,
And all the world was flowerless for a while,
Until a little child was laid in earth;
Then from its grave grew violets for its eyes,
And from its lips rose-petals for its smile.
—MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN.
Sweet and sad, like a white dove’s note,
Strange voices wakened my soul to glee,
And soft scents strayed from the violet’s throat.
—BERNARD WELLER.
When the rain beats and March winds blow,
We should be glad if we could know
How, not so very far away,
There shineth a serener day
Where birds are blithe, and happy children pass
To gather violets among the grass.
—EMILY S. OAKEY.
Like a violet, like a lark,
Like the dawn that kills the dark,
Like a dew-drop, trembling, clinging,
Is the poet’s first sweet singing.
—RICHARD WATSON GILDER.
Earth folds dark blankets round the violet blue.
—AUSTIN DOBSON.
Her mild eyes were innocent of ill
As violets in sheltered nooks enshrined.
—CARRYL.
O violets, who never fret, nor say, “I won’t!” “I will!”
Who only live to do your best His wishes to fulfil,
Teach us your sweet obedience.
—CELIA THAXTER.
When beechen buds begin to swell,
And woods the bluebird’s warble know,
The yellow violet’s modest bell
Peeps from the last year’s leaves below.
—WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
I hold thy violets against my face
And deeply breathe the haunting purple scent
That fills my weary heart with sweet content
And lays upon my soul a chrismal grace;
The air around me for a little space
Is heavy with the fragrance they have lent,
And every passing wind that heavenward went
Has held thy blossoms in a close embrace.
—MYRTLE REED.
’Twas when the spring was coming, when the snow
Had melted, and fresh winds began to blow,
And girls were selling violets in the town.
—ROBERT BUCHANAN.
My house is small and low;
But with pictures such as these,—
Of the sunset, and the row
Of illuminated trees,
And the heifer as she drinks
From the field of meadowed ground,
With the violets and the pinks
For a border all around,—
Let me never, foolish, pray
For a vision wider spread,
But, contented, only say,
Give me, Lord, my daily bread.
—ALICE CARY.
How can our fancies help but go
Out from this realm of mist and rain,
Out from this realm of sleet and snow,
When the first southern violets blow?
—THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.
But one short week ago the trees were bare,
And winds were keen, and violets pinched with frost;
Today the spring is in the air.
—JOHN TODHUNTER.
Are there violets in the sod,
Crocuses beneath the clod?
When will Boreas give us peace?
Or has Winter signed a lease
For another month of frost,
Leaving Spring to pay the cost?
For it seems he still is king,
Though ’tis spring.
—CHRISTOPHER PEARSE CRANCH.
See, the violets call from out the grasses,
Look, the purple answers from the ground;
Azure melts and to that warbler passes,
Sudden, a sky-fleck on the fences found!
—CHARLES DE KAY.
I know that thou art the word of my God, dear violet.
—SIDNEY LANIER.
On sheltered banks, beneath the dripping eaves,
Spring’s earliest nurselings spread their glowing leaves,
Bright with the hues from wider pictures won,
White, azure, golden,—drift, or sky, or sun;—
The snowdrop, bearing on her patient breast
The frozen trophy torn from winter’s crest;
The violet, gazing on the arch of blue
Till her own iris wears its deepened hue;
The spendthrift crocus, bursting through the mould,
Naked and shivering with his cup of gold.
—OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
The meadow your walks have left so sweet
That wherever a March wind sighs,
He sets the jewel-print of your feet
In violets blue as your eyes.
—ALFRED TENNYSON.
The warring hosts of Winter and of Spring
Are hurtling o’er the plains.
All night I heard their battle clarions ring
And jar the window-panes.
The saddened robins flit through leafless trees,
And chirp with tuneless voice,
And wait the conquering sun, the unbinding breeze;
They cannot yet rejoice.
Slowly the victor Spring her foe outflanks,
And countermines his snows;
Then, unawares, along the grassy banks,
Her ambushed violets throws.
—CHRISTOPHER P. CRANCH.
Knowledge this man prizes best
Seems fantastic to the rest:
Pondering shadows, colors, clouds,
Grass-buds and caterpillar shrouds,
Boughs on which the wild bees settle,
Tints that spot the violet’s petal.
—RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
But who hath breathed the scent of violets
And not that moment been some lover glad?
—ARLO BATES.
What blooms here,
Filling the honeyed atmosphere
With faint, delicious fragrances,
Freighted with blessed memories?
The earliest March violet,
Dear as the image of Regret,
And beautiful as Hope.
—EMMA LAZARUS.
Violets and bilberry bells,
Maple-sap and daffodels,
Grass with green flag half-mast high.
—RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
Pit, pat, patter, clatter,
Sudden sun, and clatter, patter!
First the blue and then the shower;
Bursting bud and smiling flower;
Brooks set free with tinkling ring;
Birds too full of song to sing;
Crisp old leaves astir with pride,
Where the timid violets hide:
All things ready with a will—
April’s coming up the hill!
—MARY MAPES DODGE.
Violets suit when homebirds build and sing.
—CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.
Radiant Sister of the Day,
Awake, arise, and come away
To the wild woods and the plains;
To the pools where winter rains
Image all their roof of leaves;
Where the pine its garland weaves,
Of sapless green and ivy dim,
Round stems that never kiss the sun;
Where the lawns and pastures be,
And the sand-hills of the sea;
Where the melting hoar-frost wets
The daisy-star that never sets;
And wind-flowers and violets,
Which yet join not scent to hue,
Crown the pale year, weak and new.
—PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
CHAPTER FOUR
The lone violet, which for love’s own sake,
Its life exhales in pure unconscious good.
—FRANCES L. MACE.