heart’s-ease. 
57 
And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow, 
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts. 
But I might see young Cupid’s fiery shaft 
Quench’d in the chaste beams of the wat’ry moon 
And the imperial vot’ress passed on 
In maiden meditation, fancy-free. 
Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell: 
It fell upon a little western flower, 
Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound, 
And maidens call it Love in Idleness. 
The juice of it, on sleeping eyelids laid, 
Will make or man or woman madly doat 
Upon the next live creature that it sees. 
Shakspeare. 
In the year 1815, this flower furnished occa¬ 
sion for a tragi-comic occurrence in France. 
A. schoolmaster in a provincial town had pro¬ 
posed as a theme for his pupils a description of 
the Viola Tricolor , and given them as a motto 
the following passage from a Latin poem by 
Father Rapin, entitled “ The Gardens 
Flosque Jovis varius, folii tricoloris, et ipsi 
Par violte. 
The mayor of the town was informed of the 
circumstance; and, taking it into his head that 
the object of the schoolmaster was to excite 
insurrection against the government of the 
3* 
