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BRITISH WILD FLOWERS. 
Other poets have also sung the Violet. Clare in his “ Village Minstrel ” speaks of it as one of the first 
flowers of spring : — 
u And just to say the spring was come 
The Violet left her woodland home, 
And hermit-like, from storms and wind 
Sought the best shelter it could find 
Beneath long grass.” 
Moore tells us that the Sweet Violet is highly esteemed in the East, and that it is used, combined with 
sugar, to make sherbet ; and speaking of a maiden who sang the charms of home while in captivity, he adds :— 
“ Her dream of home steals timidly away, 
Shrinking as violets do in summer’s ray.” 
The Violet forms also a favourite emblem for a lady’s seal, with the motto “ II faut me chercher" 
poet has compared it to woman’s love :— 
“ A woman’s love, deep in the breast, 
Is like the violet flower 
Shakespeare says:— 
That lifts its modest head apart 
In some sequestered bower.” 
“ Violets dim, 
But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes, 
Or Cytherea’s breath.” 
Another 
And then again, in the “Twelfth Night,” he has those beautiful and well-known lines :— 
“ 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 odour.” 
Rapin, who wrote a Latin Poem on Gardens in the sixteenth century, tells a curious legend of the origin 
of the Violet. He says that this simple flower was once a maiden called Ianthis, one of Diana’s nymphs, who 
attracted the attention of Apollo; and flying from his pursuit, implored Diana to destroy the beauty which 
occasioned her so much trouble. Diana complying, changed the maiden’s beautiful face into a dusky blue ; but 
Ianthis soon began to deplore the loss of her charms, and pined away, after which the pitying goddess changed 
her into a flower which still shrinks from Apollo, (the sun), and hides her diminished beauty in the shadd. 
It would take too much space to quote all the beautiful poetry which has been written on the Violet; but 
the following lines by Barry Cornwall are somewhat out of the common routine :— 
“ It has a scent as though Love for its dower , 
Had on it all his odorous arrows tost ; 
For, though the rose has more perfuming power, 
The Violet (haply ’cause ’tis almost lost, 
And takes us so much trouble to discover) 
Stands first with most, hut always with a lover.” 
The Violet was formerly the emblem of liberty; and it was adopted by Buonaparte during the time he was 
in the Isle of Elba, as a token by which his partizans recognised every one who carried this flower in his button¬ 
hole as his friend. Indeed, when speaking of Buonaparte, they called him La Violette. At the floral games 
at Toulouse, instituted in the early part of the fourteenth century, the prize gained by the best Troubadour, was 
a golden Violet ; and Miss Landon took this as the subject of one of her poems. 
