VIOLET. 
125 
TO A VIOLET. 
BOWRING. 
Sweet flower! Spring’s earliest, loveliest gem ! 
While other flowers are idly sleeping, 
Thou rear’st thy purple cliadem; 
Meekly from thy seclusion peeping. 
Thou, from thy little secret mound. 
Where diamond dew-drops shine above thee, 
Scatterest thy modest fragrance round ; 
And well may Nature’s Poet love thee ! 
Thine is a short, swift reign, I know — 
But here,—thy spirit still pervading— 
New violets’ tufts again shall blow, 
Then fade away — as thou art fading. 
And be renew’d; the hope how blest, 
(O may that hope desert me never!) 
Like thee to sleep on nature’s breast, 
And wake again, and bloom for ever! 
TO A YELLOW VIOLET. 
ANON. 
W hen beechen buds begin to swell. 
And woods the blue-birds’ warble know, 
The yellow violet’s modest bell 
Peeps from the last year’s leaves below. 
