PEPACTON 



"That strain again! it had a dying fall: 

 Oh! it came o'er my ear like the sweet south 

 That breathes upon a bank of violets, 

 Stealing and giving odor," 



or lauded it as 



"Sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, 

 Or Cytherea's breath." 



Our best known sweet-scented violet is a small, 

 white, lilac-veined species (not yellow, as Bryant 

 has it in his poem), that is common in wet, out-of- 

 the-way places. Our common blue violet the 

 only species that is found abundantly everywhere 

 in the North blooms in May, and makes bright 

 many a grassy meadow slope and sunny nook. Yet, 

 for all that, it does not awaken the emotion in one 

 that the earlier and more delicate spring flowers 

 do, the hepatica, say, with its shy wood habits, 

 its pure, infantile expression, and at times its deli- 

 cate perfume ; or the houstonia> " innocence," 

 flecking or streaking the cold spring earth with a 

 milky way of minute stars ; or the trailing arbutus, 

 sweeter scented than the English violet, and out- 

 vying in tints Cytherea's or any other blooming 

 goddess's cheek. Yet these flowers have no classical 

 associations, and are consequently far less often 

 upon the lips of our poets than the violet. 



To return to birds, another dangerous one for the 

 American poet is the lark, and our singers generally 

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