I love the richness of that gorgeous hue, I Yet in each wreath they claim the earliest place, 
The Violet is decked in deepest blue, > Sweet as the smiles which crown that lovely face ! 
The Hyacinth is darker still than you; J | 
Virgil, the prince of the Latin poets, perhaps the most elegant of all poets, does not forget this graceful 
flower. In the first of the following quotations, pallentes violas probably means the white violet. 
Hue ades, o formose puer. Tibi lilia plenis 
Ecce ferunt nymphse calathis: tibi Candida Nais, 
Pallentes violas, et summa papavera carpens, 
Narcissum, et florem jungit bene olentis anethi. 
Turn casia, atque aliis intexens suavibus herbis, 
Mollia luteola pingit vaccinia caltha. 
Virg. Ed. ij. 
O come! the Nymphs for thee in baskets bring 
Their lilied stores : for thee the blooming spring 
The white-armed Naiad rifles ; violets pale, 
The poppy’s flush, and dills which scent the gale, 
Cassia, and hyacinth, and daffodil, 
With yellow marigold the chaplet fill. 
Wrangham's Transi. 
Pro molli vioU, pro purpureo narcisso 
Carduus et spinis surgit paliurus acutis. 
Virgil. Eel v. 
for the daffodil and violet’s bloom, 
Thistles and briars in rank luxuriance gloom. 
Wrangham's Transi. 
Shakespeare repeatedly mentions it, as for instance, in the opening speech of Twelfth Night. 
If music be the food of love, play on ; 
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting, 
The appetite may sicken, and so die. 
That strain again ; it had a dying fall : 
And in the following passages: 
I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows, 
Where ox-lips and the nodding violet grows; 
Quite over-canopied with lush woodbine, 
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine : 
There sleeps Titania, some time of the night, 
Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight. 
Midsummer Night's Dream, Act ii, Scene 2. 
O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet south, 
That breathes upon a bank of violets, 
Stealing, and giving odour. 
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, 
To throw a perfume on the violet, 
To smooth the ice, or add another hue 
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light 
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, 
Is wasteful, and ridiculous excess. 
King John, Act iv. Scene ?. 
O Proserpina, 
For the flowers now, that frighted, thou let’st fall 
From Dis’s waggon ! daffodils, 
That come before the swallow dares, and take 
The winds of March with beauty; violets, dim, 
But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes, 
Or Cytherea’s breath ; pale primroses, 
That die unmarried, ere they can behold 
Bright Phoebus in his strength. 
Winter’s Tale. Act iv Scene 
For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favor, 
Hold it a fashion, and a toy in blood; 
A violet in the youth of primy nature, 
Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting, 
The perfume and suppliance of a minute ; 
No more. 
Hamlet, Act i. Scene 3. 
Here is a delightful passage in Milton’s best style — a mixture of vigour and tenderness. 
Ye vallies low, where the mild whispers use 
Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks, 
On whose fresh lap the swart-star sparely looks; 
Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes, 
That on the green turf suck the honied showers, 
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. 
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, 
The tufted crow-toe, and the pale jessamine, 
The white pink, and the pansy freakt with jet, 
The glowing violet, 
The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine, 
With cowslips wan, that hang the pensive head. 
And every flower that sad embroidery wears : 
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, 
And daffodillies fill their cups with tears, 
To strow the laureat hearse where Lycid lies. 
Milton. Lycidas. 
Since all things are in a state of change, but nothing utterly perishes, the atoms that once formed a hu- 
man body, will again appear in the shape of herbs and flowers, and the poets with their usual felicity, of 
thought, imagine that violets will spring from the remains of some loved and agreeable form. Thus Laer- 
tes says of Ophelia, 
Lay her i’ the earth, 
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh, 
May violets spring ! 
Hamlet, Act v . Scene 1 . 
Underneath this turf is laid 
Prudence Baldwin, once my maid; 
From her happy spark, here let 
Spring the purple violet. 
Herrick. 
We will conclude these quotations with an epigram from the Greek Anthologia; 
I send a wreath of earliest flowers 
For thee, dear girl, for thee; 
Each gift of spring’s most lavish hours 
Was culled and wove by me. 
The virgin lily here is seen, 
The moist narcissus too ; 
The purple violet decked with green, 
The rose of crimson hue. 
Then while these flowers around your hair 
You twine, sweet black-eyed maid, 
N o longer mock a lover’s prayer, 
For you, like them, must fade ! 
