Blue to Purple Flowers 273 



acute or acuminate, crenately toothed. Flowers: large; petals villous 

 at base; spur saccate. 



This large Early Violet is really of a true violet colour; 

 it grows most luxuriantly in very moist ground, usually on 

 the low banks of streams or in the marshes, for it is there 

 that 



" The purple violets lurk, 

 With all the lovely children of the shade." 



Poets have ever loved and praised the Violet. The Bard 

 of Avon sang of how 



"Violets blue, 



And lady-smocks all silver white, 

 And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue 

 Do paint the meadows with delight"; 



later causing Oberon to relate : 



" I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows, 

 Where ox-lips and the nodding violet grows." 



Milton told of the 



" Violet embroidered vale " ; 



and Scott claimed that 



" The violet in her greenwood bower, 



Where birchen boughs with hazel mingle, 

 May boast herself the fairest flower 

 In forest glade or cop'sewood dingle." 



Long before Shakespeare's day, however, the ancient 

 Arabians sang its praise. It was the favourite flower of 

 Mahomet, just as it was that of Napoleon in modern times, 

 and has since become the emblem of the Bonapartists, who 

 still wear it as a token of their devotion to a lost cause, 

 remembering, perhaps, Shakespeare's proverb that 



"Violet is for faithfulness." 



No legitimist in France will ever wear these flowers. 



