Yet it is curious to note how, like Primroses, they have been ever associated with death, especially with the death of the young. I suppose these ideas must have arisen from a sort of pity for flowers that were only allowed to see the opening year, and were cut off before the full beauty of summer had come. This was prettily expressed by H. Vaughan, the Silurist:
"So violets, so doth the primrose fall
At once the spring's pride and its funeral,
Such early sweets get off in their still prime,
And stay not here to wear the foil of time;
While coarser flowers, which none would miss, if past,
To scorching summers and cold winters last."
Daphnis, 1678.
It was from this association that they were looked on as apt emblems of those who enjoyed the bright springtide of life and no more. This feeling was constantly expressed, and from very ancient times. We find it in some pretty lines by Prudentius—
"Nos tecta fovebimus ossa
Violis et fronde frequente,
Titulumque et frigida saxa
Liquido spargemus odore."
Shakespeare expresses the same feeling in the collection of "purple Violets and Marigolds" which Marina carries to hang "as a carpet on the grave" (No. [14]), and again in Laertes' wish that Violets may spring from the grave of Ophelia (No. [8]), on which Steevens very aptly quotes from Persius Satires—
"e tumulo fortunataque favillâ.
Nascentur Violæ."
In the same spirit Milton, gathering for the grave of Lycidas—
"Every flower that sad embroidery wears,"
gathers among others "the glowing Violet;" and the same thought is repeated by many other writers.