Shelley held the same idea that the delicious perfume of flowers is like the softest melody:
The snowdrop and then the violet
Arose from the ground with warm rain wet;
And there was mixed with fresh color, sent
From the turf like the voice and the instrument.
And the hyacinth, purple and white and blue,
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew
Of music, so delicate, soft and intense
It was felt like an odor within the sense.
Ophelia laments that she has no violets to give to the court ladies and lords, for "they withered" when her father died, she tells us. Shakespeare also associates violets with melancholy occasions. Marina enters in "Pericles" with a basket of flowers on her arm, saying:[42]
The yellows, blues,
The purple violets and marigolds
Shall as a carpet hang upon thy grave
While summer days do last.
[42] Act IV, Scene II.
On another occasion, with a broad sweeping gesture, Shakespeare mentions
The violets that strew
The green lap of the new-come Spring.
In "Sonnet XCIX" he writes: