Violet. 
259 
Many are the passages in which the bard of Avon employs 
his beloved flower as the type of modesty and maidenhood. 
Indeed, poets are continually using this retiring blossom to 
emblemize those qualities. 
“ Steals timidly away, 
Shrinking as violets do in Summer’s ray,” 
says the author of “ Lalla Rookh.” Keats delighted to paint 
little secluded sylvan bowers “where violet-beds were nestling;” 
and the following lines, by the Rev. John Moultrie, give a pretty 
picture of the sort of place where these sweet flowers may be 
found : 
“ Under the green hedges after the snow, 
There do the dear little violets grow, 
Hiding their modest and beautiful heads 
Under the hawthorn in soft mossy beds. 
“ Sweet as the roses, and blue as the sky, 
Down there do the dear little violets lie, 
Hiding their heads where they scarce may be seen ; 
By the leaves you may know where the violet hath been.” 
Bernard Barton, in “ Poetic Vigils,” speaks of the “ unob¬ 
trusive worth and meek content” of these modest blossoms, 
prompting them to bless the passer-by with fragrance, and in 
mute eloquence express their timid thoughts. In her “Gossip 
with a Bouquet,” Mrs. Sigourney first addresses herself to “you, 
meek violet, with your eyes of blue.” The venerable and vene¬ 
rated Barry Cornwall, whose beautiful lyrics are sweet as the 
hopes of youth and the memories of old age, has continually 
expressed his love for “ violets, whose looks are like the skies,” 
and in the following stanza even assigns it the first rank in 
Flora’s fragrant Court: 
“The king told Gyges of the purple flower ; 
It chanced to be the flower the boy liked most: 
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’t is almost lost, 
And takes us so much trouble to discover— 
Stands first with most, but always with a lover.” 
This same delicate poet, whose songs seem almost too sweet 
for singing, has favoured us with this fairy lyric to the violet: 
17 —2 
