Violets

“ A few shy violets were in blossom—the afternoon sun was playing upon the opening blossoms. I picked two or three tiny flowers, but only a few, for I like to leave a spot as fair as I found it, and the little petals were still tightly curled. Growing close to the violet was another charming woodland flower, the wood-sorrel, or witches’ cheeses as village children often call it here. The little blossoms were of an exquisite translucent white, with delicate lavender veins, and strange triangular leaves that folded up at night like the leaves of a sensitive plant. ”

“ Violet!
—COSMO MONKHOUSE.
Violets, shy violets,
How many hearts with thee compare,
Who hide themselves in thickest green,
And thence unseen
Ravish the enraptured air
With sweetness, dewy, fresh and fair!
—ANONYMOUS. [Pg 30]
I think the very violets
Are looking the way you’ll come!
—ALICE CARY.
Once, long ago, in summer’s glow,
We threaded, you and I,
A garden’s maze of pleasant ways,
Whose beauty charmed the eye,—
Where violets bent in sweet content
And pinks stood proud and high.
—ELIZABETH AKERS ALLEN.
Then, feeble man, be wise, tak tent
How industry can fetch content. ”

“ The violets, especially in these grounds, are abundant and luxuriant, making every space of sward shadowed by the trees purple with their loveliness, like a reflection of the violet sky that had broken in through the lattice-work of boughs, and scenting all the air with their delicious perfume. ”

“ Violets!"
Children of sun and of dew,
Flakes of the blue of the sky,
There is somebody calling to you
Who seems to be longing to die;
Yet violets are so sweet
They can scarcely have dealings with death. ”

“ You could not have made Violet think there was a pleasanter home on earth than hers, when the clematis was starred all over with white blossoms, and the honeysuckle she had trained over the door was full of bright yellow flowers, and the hop vine hung full of its beautiful cones, and among all shone the bright pink wild roses, and the whole air was sweet with her own favorite violets.
Birds built nests within the vine, and hatched their young, and sang loudly and sweetly to their friends in the hut as often as they cared to hear. ”

“ Pretty violets!
White, with just a pinky dye,
Blue as little baby's eye,—
So like violets.
Though the rough wind shakes the house,
Knocks about the budding boughs,
There are violets.
Though the passing snow-storms come,
And the frozen birds sit dumb,
Up spring violets.
One by one among the grass,
Saying "Pluck me!" as we pass,—
Scented violets.
By and by there'll be so many,
We'll pluck dozens nor miss any:
Sweet, sweet violets!
Children, when you go to play,
Look beneath the hedge to-day:—
Mamma likes violets. ”

“ But for him who has eyes to behold,
The violets bloom in October.
—ELIZABETH AKERS ALLEN.
The soft warm haze
Makes moist once more the sere and dusty ways,
And, creeping through where dead leaves lie in drifts,
The violet returns. ”

“ Let the darkness turn violet with rich dawn. Let the darkness be warmed, warmed through to a ruddy violet, incipient purpling towards summer in the world of the heart of man. Are the violets already here! ”

“ VIOLETS BLOOM IN SPRING.
The violets flower in spring,
And the heath in autumn gray.
Too late to love to-morrow,
If you have not loved to-day.
The world is full of maidens,
Like poppies, blooming free. ”

“ Nipped by the furtive frosts, but cheery still,
Lifting to heaven from the bare garden place
A smiling face.
Roses are fair, but frail, and soon grow faint,
Nor can endure a hardness; violets blue,
Short-lived and sweet, live but a day or two ”

“ In the violet’s hidden sweetness breathes.
—JAMES G. PERCIVAL.
Perchance the violets o’er my dust
Will half betray their buried trust,
And say, their blue eyes full of dew,
“She loved you better than you knew.”
—ELIZABETH AKERS ALLEN.
Nature does not recognize
This strife that rends the earth and skies;
No war-dreams vex the winter sleep of clover-heads and daisy-eyes:
When blood her grassy altar wets,
She sends the pitying violets
To heal the outrage with their bloom and cover it with soft regrets.
—ELIZABETH AKERS ALLEN. [Pg 20]
Sure thou didst flourish once! ”

“ The violet trills, through the bluebird,
Of the heaven that within her she feels.
—LUCY LARCOM.
Like those same winds when, startled from their lair,
They hunt up violets, and free swift brooks
From icy caves, even as thy clear looks
Bid my heart bloom, and sing, and break all care.
—JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. [Pg 61]
And now the other violets are crowding up to see
What welcome in this blustering world may chance for them to be.
They lift themselves on slender stems in every shaded place,
Heads over heads, all turned one way, wonder in every face. ”

“ Violet, why
Peep from your earth-door
So silent and shy?
—LUCY LARCOM.
O day of days! Thy memory
Will never fade, nor pass;
Patches of lowly violets
Were clouding all the grass.
—ALICE CARY.
Go, modest little violets, and lie upon her breast;
Your eyes will tell her something—perhaps she’ll guess the rest!
—CHARLES HENRY WEBB. [Pg 133]
How gentle is the soul that looketh out
From violets sweet through dim, blue, tearful eyes,
That turns a pleading face to look about
And watch the sun’s course through the smiling skies!
—ISAAC BASSETT CHOATE.
Who beheld it? ”

“ Borrow their perfumes; whose eye
Gilds the morn, and clears the sky;
Whose disheveled tresses shed
Pearls upon the violet bed.
—THOMAS CAREW.
A wealth of clover clothes the place
Where, clad in buff-lined coats of blue,
Our countrymen o’erthrew
Their alien foe; and violets efface
All signs of combat.
—D. CHAUNCEY BREWER. [Pg 64]
Down through the sunshine
Wings flutter and fly;—
Quick, little violet,
Open your eye!
—LUCY LARCOM.
Where violets hide,
Where star-flowers strew the rivulet’s side,
And blue-birds, in the misty spring,
Of cloudless skies and summer sing. ”

“ Grow misty-green with leafing buds,
And violets and wind-flowers sway
Against the throbbing heart of May.
—JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.
When springtime comes,
Primrose and violet haunt the mossy bank.
—HENRY G. HEWLETT. [Pg 72]
Rosy and white on the wanton breeze
The petals fall from the apple-trees,
And under the hedge where the shade lies wet
Are children, picking the violet.
—F. W. BOURDILLON.
The same sweet sounds are in my ear
My early childhood loved to hear.
The violet there, in soft May dew,
Comes up, as modest and as true.
—WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
Farewell to thee, France! ”

“ Her mild eyes were innocent of ill
As violets in sheltered nooks enshrined.
—CARRYL. [Pg 46]
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. ”

“ Slender, white fingers, idle now, they that had never known rest; locked softly over a bunch of violets; violets and tube-roses in her soft, brown hair, violets in the bosom of her long, white gown; violets and tube-roses and orange-blossoms banked everywhere, until the air was filled with the ascending souls of the human flowers. Some whispered that a broken heart had ceased to flutter in that still, young form, and that it was a mercy for the soul to ascend on the slender sunbeam. To-day she kneels at the throne of heaven, where one year ago she had communed at an earthly altar. ”

“ When you go into the fields and woods in the spring to gather wild flowers, haven't you found some blossoms larger, more perfectly colored and with a sweeter perfume than others? No two violets are just alike. Some are small and pale, others large and blue and fragrant. In the plant world it has always been like that. ”

“ A wave of perfume floated to him from the violets on her breast. Never, never, he felt, had she been so dear, so alluring; but, then, he did not stop to remember that he often told himself that.
“Ah, Rose-of-the-world,” he murmured, “you should never wear anything but blue—blue with violets. If I have violets for you every day in the year, will you always wear them?” ”

“ THE VIOLET AND THE ROSE The violet in the wood, that's sweet to-day, Is longer sweet than roses of red June; Set me sweet violets along my way, And bid the red rose flower, but not too soon. Ah violet, ah rose, why not the two? Why bloom not all fair flowers the whole year through? Why not the two, young violet, ripe rose? Why dies one sweetness when another blows? Augusta Webster [1837-1894]
TO A WIND-FLOWER Teach me the secret of thy loveliness, That, being made wise, I may aspire to be As beautiful in thought, and so express Immortal truths to earth's mortality ”

“ The few days of sunshine since we were last there have clothed the whole earth with delicate purple and white blossoms, a little resembling the wood anemone, but growing close to the soil, and making one think of violets with their pale purple colour: they have no fragrance whatever. ”

“ 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. [Pg 98]
O violets, blue-eyed violets! ”

“ "when I came to you out of all that dust and heat and toil, I positively smelt violets at once. But not the sweet violet -- you know, that early dark violet that smells of melting snow and spring grass." ”

“ There are soft, moist banks where purple and white violets grow large and fair, and trees all interlaced with ivy, which runs and twines everywhere, intermingling its dark, graceful leaves and vivid young shoots with the bloom and leafage of all shadowy places. ”

“ 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. [Pg 95]
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. ”

“ For violets suit when home birds build and sing,
Not when the outbound bird a passage cleaves;
Not with dry stubble of mown harvest sheaves,
But when the green world buds to blossoming.
Keep violets for the spring, and love for youth,
Love that should dwell with beauty, mirth, and hope:
Or if a later sadder love be born,
Let this not look for grace beyond its scope,
But give itself, nor plead for answering truth—
A grateful Ruth tho' gleaning scanty corn.
'THEY DESIRE A BETTER COUNTRY' (Macmillan's Magazine, March 1869.) ”

“ Sir Advocate, I say and affirm, in spite of your speech, that Violet is more joyfully welcomed, more beloved, and more desired than Rose. Here is the cause; [25] now listen to the truth. When a winter full of frost and chill shall have put to rout, by its prolonged stay, trees and fruits, leaves and flowers, then men and women and children long for bright days, and wish the springtime to come swiftly, when they will hear the singing of larks and will find violets in orchards, gardens, and every pretty close. ”

“ HOW THE FAIRY VIOLET
he Fairy Violet lived in the heart of a beautiful forest, where, through the glad spring months, the sun shone softly, and the bright flowers bloomed, and now and then the gentle rain fell in silver drops that made every green thing on which they rested fresher and more beautiful still. At the foot of a stately oak nestled a clump of violets, and it was there the wee fairy made her home. She wore a robe of deep violet, and her wings, which were of the most delicate gauze, glistened like dew-drops in the sun. ”

“ The shy, sweet violet of the wood.
—WEATHERLY.
Her bloom the rose outvies,
The lily dares no plea,
The violet’s glory dies,
No flower so sweet can be;
When love is in her eyes
What need of spring for me?
—ANNA MARIA FAY.
Who is there can sing of a more divine thing
Than the edge of the woods in the edge of the spring,
Ere the violets peep, while hepaticas sleep,
And still in the hollows the snow-drifts lie deep?
—MILDRED G. PHILLIPS. [Pg 36]
The erthe was ful softe and swete. ”

“ Listen, Violet, I am going to tell you a wonderful secret. And this wonderful secret is about your namesakes, the violets. Every little flower that grows is a living being, as you or I—and every plant is a household. How do I know this? The flowers told me themselves, and now I am going to let you into the secret.
Of course, I must admit that the flowers do not talk as we do. Unlike ourselves, they cannot express themselves aloud. They must show their thoughts by their motions or by their change of expression. When a flower is thirsty, how does it tell us so? ”

“ The first-born violets of the year shall spring;
And in thy hazles, bending o'er the tide,
The earliest nightingale delight to sing:
While kindred spirits, pitying, shall relate
Thy Otway's sorrows, and lament his fate! ”

“ And soft scents strayed from the violet’s throat.
—BERNARD WELLER. [Pg 45]
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. ”