CHAPTER TWELVE
O Winter, thou art warm at heart;
Thine every pulse doth throb and glow,
And thou dost feel life’s joy and smart,
Beneath the blinding snow.
Thine is the scent of bursting bud,
Of April shower and violet;
Thou feelest spring in all thy blood
Yearn up like sweet regret.
—JAMES BENJAMIN KENYON.
Bare are the places where the sweet flowers dwelt.
What joy sufficient hath November felt,
What profit from the violets’ day of pain?
—HELEN HUNT JACKSON.
Pluck the others, but still remember
Their herald out of dim December—
The morning-star of all the flowers,
The pledge of daylight’s lengthened hours;
Nor, midst the roses, e’er forget
The virgin, virgin violet.
—LORD BYRON.
Violet, little violet,
Brave and true and sweet thou art.
May is in thy sunny heart,
Maiden violet.
Gentle as the summer day,
Wintry storms bring no dismay,
Winsome violet.
All the days to thee are spring,
Thine own sunshine dost thou bring,
Violet, faithful violet!
—ANONYMOUS.
Only in dreams thy love comes back,
And fills my soul with joy divine.
Only in dreams I feel thy heart
Once more beat close to mine.
Only in blissful dreams of spring,
And sunny banks of violet blue,
The past folds back its curtain dim
And memory shows thine image true.
—MELVILLE M. BIGELOW.
Winter is come again. There is no voice
Of waters with beguiling for your ear,
And the cool forest and the meadows green
Witch not your feet away; and in the dells
There are no violets.
—NATHANIEL P. WILLIS.
Once more, dear friend, the violet bank we seek,
And tread with joy our old familiar ways.
—JESSIE CUNNINGHAM HOWDEN.
Cheek o’er cheek, and with red so tender
Rippling bright through the gypsy brown,
Just to see how a lady’s splendor
Shone the heads of the daffodils down.
Winds through the violets’ misty covering
Now kissed the white ones and now the blue,
Sang the redbreast over them hovering
All as the world were but just made new.
—ALICE CARY.
Daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets, dim
But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes
Or Cytherea’s breath.
—WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
Could you not come when woods are green?
Could you not come when lambs are seen?
When the primrose laughs from its child-like sleep,
And the violets hide and the bluebells peep?
—ALFRED AUSTIN.
Thy face is like the violet’s
That to the red rose lingers close,
And he who looks at thee forgets
The honeyed sweetness of the rose.
—JOEL BENTON.
He gave her the wildwood roses
And violets for her wreath,
And a whisper at last of sweet response
Stole on her perfumed breath.
—FRANCES L. MACE.
Come not, O sweet days,
Out of yon cloudless blue,
Ghosts of so many dear remembered Mays,
With faces like dead lovers, who died true.
Come not, lest we go seek with eyes all wet,
Primrose and violet,
Forgetting that they lie
Deep in the mould till winter has gone by.
—DINAH MARIA MULOCH CRAIK.
Blighting and blowing—blighting and blowing—
And the stones of the rivulet silent lie,
And the winds in the fading woodlands cry,
And the birds in the clouds are going;
And the dandelion hides his gold,
And their little blue tents the violets fold,
And the air is gray with snowing:
So life keeps coming and going.
—ALICE CARY.
Dear chance it were in some rough wood-god’s lair
·······
To sink o’erdrowsed, and dream that wild-flowers blew
Around my head and feet silently there,
Till spring’s glad choir adown the valley pealed
And violets trembled in the morning dew.
—EDWARD DOWDEN.
The sunbeams kiss askant the sombre hill,
The naked woodbine climbs the window-sill,
The breaths that noon exhales are faint and chill.
Tread lightly where the dainty violets blew,
Where to spring winds their soft eyes open flew;
Safely they sleep the churlish winter through.
Though all life’s portals are indiced with woe,
And frozen pearls are all the world can show,
Feel! Nature’s breath is warm beneath the snow!
—ANONYMOUS.
You’ll look at least on love’s remains,
A grave’s one violet?
Your look?—that pays a thousand pains.
What’s death? You’ll love me yet!
—ROBERT BROWNING.
Out of every shadowy nook
Spirit faces seem to look,
Some with smiling eyes, and some
With a sad entreaty dumb;
He who shepherded his sheep
On the wild Sicilian steep,
He above whose grave are set
Sprays of Roman violet;
Poets, sages,—all who wrought
In the crucible of thought.
—CLINTON SCOLLARD.
A fair little girl sat under a tree
Sewing as long as her eyes could see;
Then smoothed her work and folded it right,
And said, “Dear work, good night, good night!”
The tall pink foxglove bowed his head;
The violets curtsied and went to bed;
And good little Lucy tied up her hair,
And said, on her knees, her favorite prayer.
—RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES.
My banks they are furnished with bees,
Whose murmur invites one to sleep;
My grottoes are shaded with trees,
And my hills are white over with sheep;
I seldom have met with a loss,
Such health do my fountains bestow;
My fountains all bordered with moss,
Where the harebells and violets grow.
—WILLIAM SHENSTONE.
Where the fern in gladness dances
On the banks of dimpled burns,
Where the streamlet’s bright wave glances
When the spring returns;
White as winter’s spotless drift
There our faces we uplift.
Still we see the stars above us,
Still we trust, because they love us—
Are they flowers in the sky,
Violets that have learned to fly?
We believe, and hope, and trust,
Know that He who made is just,
And He never will forsake us
While we’re white and pure of heart.
Sister, maiden Sister, take us—
One of us thou art!
—WILLIS BOYD ALLEN.
O violets, sweet blue eyes of the spring!
—DEXTER SMITH.
Here’s the violet’s modest blue,
That ’neath hawthorns hides from view.
While they choose each lovely spot,
The sun disdains them not;
So I’ve brought the flowers to plead
And win a smile from thee.
—JOHN CLARE.
Last night I found the violets
You sent me once across the sea;
From gardens that the winter frets,
In summer lands they came to me.
Still fragrant of the English earth,
Still hurried from the frozen dew,
To me they spoke of Christmas mirth,
They spoke of England, spoke of you.
—ANDREW LANG.
Darling, walk with me this morn;
Let your brown tresses drink its sheen;
These violets, within them worn,
Of floral fays shall make you queen.
—EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.
O faint, delicious, springtime violet!
Thine odor, like a key,
Turns noiselessly in memory’s wards to let
A thought of sorrow free.
—WILLIAM W. STORY.
The violet, Spring’s little infant, stands
Girt in thy purple swaddling-bands;
On the fair tulip thou dost dote,
Thou cloth’st it in a gay and party-colored coat.
—ABRAHAM COWLEY.
Under the larch with its tassels wet,
While the early sunbeams lingered yet,
In the rosy dawn my love I met.
Under the larch when the sun was set,
He came with an April violet:
Forty years—and I have it yet.
Out of life with its fond regret,
What have love and memory yet?
Only an April violet.
—ANONYMOUS.
Good-bye to the red rose that is your mouth,
The tender violets that are your sigh;
The sweetness that you are—that is my South—
Ah, not too soon, Enchantress, do I fly!—
Tell me good-bye!
—RICHARD WATSON GILDER.
Through the deep drifts the south wind breathed its way
Down to the earth’s green face; the air grew warm,
The snowdrops had regained their lovely charm;
The world had melted round them in a day:
My full heart longed for violets.
—CHARLES TENNYSON-TURNER.
The sweetness of the violet’s deep blue eyes,
Kissed by the breath of heaven, seems colored by its skies.
—LORD BYRON.
When we were children we would say,—
“I like the coming of the spring,
I like the violets of May,
I like, why, almost everything
That March and May and April bring.”
But now we value less the rose,
And care not when the birds take wing.
We like the winter and the snows.
—JAMES BERRY BENSEL.
So long as there’s a sun that sets,
Primroses will have their glory;
Long as there are violets
They will have a place in story.
—WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
Go, azure myrtle blossom,
Go, violets and jasmine fair,
And star the darkness of her hair,
Or faint against her bosom.
—GRACE GREENWOOD.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink and the pansy freaked with jet,
The glowing violet.
—JOHN MILTON.
God does not send us strange flowers every year.
When the spring winds blow o’er the pleasant places,
The same dear things lift up the same fair faces—
The violet is here.
It all comes back: the odor, grace and hue;
Each sweet relation of its life repeated:
No blank is left, no looking-for is cheated;
It is the thing we knew.
So after the death-winter it must be.
God will not put strange signs in the heavenly places:
The old love will look out from the old faces.
Veilchen! I shall have thee!
—ADELINE D. T. WHITNEY.
INDEX
The violets whisper from the shade,
Which their own leaves have made.
—CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.