1]8 Til li FIUST VIOLET. 



Jiess of the forest, where we may sit down for a moment and smile, ere 

 we resume our journey through the deep solitudes. 



I was born at the foot of the green hills. The silence of woods, and the 

 overhano-ino- of antique boughs, were but a little distance from my home. 

 The sono- of the cuckoo often rang above my roof-tree. Meadows, 

 rainbow-coloured with flowers, spread out near my dwelling. The silver 

 Trent wound alon"- past my door. The crown-rose of the whole wreath 

 lias not to me charm enough to inspire a sonnet. But last spring. 

 heavy with care, bowing beneath the cypress, which now binds the 

 poet's brow in place of the laurel, I emerged from the dusty din of the 

 metropolis, and wandered among those few green fields, which yet 

 spread like solitary oases around its environs. Many a dreary day had 

 flided by, bearing its leading links along, since I had seen a budding 

 hawthorn. Oh ! how sweetly came the fragrance of that morning air ! 

 The birds that sang around me felt not a greater thrill of delight than 

 that which gushed silently from my heart ; I gazed upon the clear sky, 

 and the young green that carpeted the earth, and wondered how, amid 

 so much beauty and brightness, sorrow dared to set her bleeding feet on 

 such a lovely world. 



Wandering along by an old hedge, stunted and ivied, (just such a 

 hedo-e as the blackbird would select, in a more retired place, to build its 

 firm nest,) I discovered a wild violet. By a mossy bank it grew ; the dead 

 leaves lay around it, solitary, and blue, and beautiful ; not another com- 

 panion near, it stood alone amidst the bur-sting of young leaves and the 

 decay of the old ones. I sat down beside it. A little brook gurgled at my 

 feet, — a low faint melody just audible, not the glad singing of the hill- 

 brook, but a mournful murmur, a sound that well accorded with my 

 .«olitarv violet. Had tliere been a bed of those lovely flowers, I should 

 have wished for the singing voice of a river, all silver and sunshine ; but 

 the brook had a low sound, and there was but one violet. I sat in silence, 

 and gazed upon it ; I wondered if the deep alleys in Somerbywood yet 

 contained those sweet flowers. I thought of my old schoolmistress, — I 

 saw her a^-ain seated on the sunny bank ; I brought her a handful of 

 the newly-gathered treasures, — she chaunted me the old ballad of" Queene 

 Eleonare." The rest of my little schoolfellows were chasing each 

 other round the old oak trees. The wood rose before me, the very fir 

 where the stock-dove sat cooing, tapering and dark. Then the scene 

 chano-ed, and I was in an ancient chapel, amid windows, where saints 

 and c-lories, and the flooding crimson of gules, gorgeous in the shields of 

 azure and gold, threw a rich light upon the wicked Queen. And there 

 a Kino- " looked a grim look," upon the trembling Earl Marshal, and 

 frowned forgiveness. Poor old Deborah, she has long been dead ! no 

 more shall the speed I made, when running thy errands, tempt those 

 withered lips to chaurt another ballad. The violets now spring up, un- 

 gathered by thy trembling hand, " Ah!" thou didst say, " when I was 

 a voung lass, we used to gather violets, every spring, and put them 

 amont^st our clothes, and stick them in our hair, and make ourselves as 

 smart as you please, when we went to meet our sweethearts." And 

 then I looked at thee, and at thy skinny arms and wrinkled face, and 

 the few silver hairs that escaped from under thy coal-skoop-like bonnet, 

 and I wondered how fourscore years could sweep over thee, and not 



