Violets

Violet identifies various plant taxa, particularly species in the genus Viola, within which the common violet is the best known member in Eurasia and the common blue violet and common purple violet are the best known members in North America. The flowers ranges from white to yellow, orange or various shades of blue and violet or multicoloured, and are in some species highly fragrant.

While all about, a meadowy ground was seen,
Of violets mingling with the parsley green:
- Leigh Hunt, Foliage (1818), 'Mercury Going to the Cave of Calypso'
- Homer, Odyssey, Book V

The propre vyolet;
- John Skelton, The Garlande of Laurell (1528), 'To maystres Isabell Pennell'

Vpon her head a Cremosin coronet,
With Damaske roses and Dafadillies set:
Bayleaues betweene,
And Primroses greene
Embellish the sweete Violet.
- Edmund Spenser, The Shepheardes Calender (1579), 'Aprill'

Lay her in lillies and in violets,
- Edmund Spenser, Epithalamion (1595)

[T]he Violet pallid blew,
- Edmund Spenser, Prothalamion (1596)

Duchess of York:
Welcome, my son: who are the violets now
That strew the green lap of the new come spring?
Duke of Aumerle:
Madam, I know not, nor I greatly care not:
God knows I had as lief be none as one.
Duke of York:
Well, bear you well in this new spring of time,
Lest you be cropp'd before you come to prime.
- Shakespeare, Richard II, Act 5, Scene 2

King Henry (disguised):
I think the king is but a man, as I am: the violet smells to him as it doth to me: ...
- Shakespeare, Henry V, Act 4, Scene 1

Solemne Violets hanging head as shamed,
- George Chapman, Ovid’s Banquet of Sense (1595)

I need not tell thee of the lily white, ...
Nor of thy paps where Love himself doth dwell,
Which like two hills of violets appear.
- William Smith, Chloris (1596), no. 47

These blue-vein’d violets whereon we lean
Never can blab, nor know not what we mean.
- William Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis (1593)

When I behold the violet past prime,
- William Shakespeare, Sonnets, 'Sonnet 12'

The forward violet thus did I chide:—
Sweet thief, whence did thou steal thy sweet that smells,
If not from my love’s breath?
- William Shakespeare, Sonnets, 'Sonnet 99'

You violets that first appear,
  By your pure purple mantles known
Like the proud virgins of the year,
  As if the spring were all your own;
  What are you when the rose is blown?
- Sir Henry Wotton, 'On his Mistress, the Queen of Bohemia'

The violet’s reclining head,
A single violet transplant,
The strength, the colour, and the size—
All which before was poor and scant—
Redoubles still, and multiplies.
- John Donne, 'The Ecstasy'
- reclining = declining (1669 ed.)

Violets pluck’d, the sweetest rain
Makes not fresh nor grow again.
- John Fletcher, 'Weep no more'

First the Primrose courts his eyes,
Then the Cowslip he espies;
Next the Pansy seems to woo him,
Then Carnations bow unto him;
Which whilst that enamour’d swain
From the stalk intends to strain,
(As half-fearing to be seen)
Prettily her leaves between
Peeps the Violet, pale to see
That her virtues slighted be;
Which so much his liking wins
That to seize her he begins.
Let the sweet-breath’d Violet now
Unto whom she pleaseth bow;
- George Wither, 'The Choice' or 'Flos Florum'

The humble violet, that lowly down,
Salutes the gay nymphs as they trimly pass;
- William Browne of Tavistock, 'The Mushroom'

Now strength and newer purple get,
Each here declining violet;
- Robert Herrick, Hesperides (1648), 'Upon Julia’s Recovery'

Welcome, maids of honour!
  You do bring
  In the spring,
And wait upon her.
She has virgins many,
  Fresh and fair;
  Yet you are
More sweet than any.
You’re the maiden posies,
  And so graced
  To be placed
’Fore damask roses.
Yet, though thus respected,
  By-and-by
  Ye do lie,
Poor girls, neglected.
- Robert Herrick, Hesperides (1648), 'To Violets'

You are a dainty violet,
Yet wither’d ere you can be set
Within the virgin’s coronet.
- Robert Herrick, Hesperides (1648), 'A Meditation for his Mistress'

And now we must imagine first,
The elves present, to quench his thirst,
A pure seed-pearl of infant dew
Brought and besweetened in a blue
And pregnant violet, ...
- Robert Herrick, Hesperides (1648), 'Oberon’s Feast'

The violet knots, like curious mazes spread
O’er all the garden, ...
- Thomas Carew, 'A Rapture'

Thou art my all; my spring remains
In the fair violets of thy veins;
- Thomas Randolph, Poems (1638), 'A Pastoral Courtship'

The Violet (purple Senator)
- Sir Richard Fanshawe, 'Ode on His Majesty's Proclamation Commanding the Gentry to Reside on Their Estates' (1630)

There on Beds of Violets blew,
- John Milton, 'L’Allegro'

A fragrant bank of strawberries,
Diaper’d with violets’ eyes,
Was table, table-cloth, and fare;
- Richard Lovelace, Posthume Poems (1659), 'Love made in the first Age. To Chloris'

Twice happy Violets! that first had Birth
In the warm Spring, when no frosts nip the Earth;
Thrice happy now; since you transplanted are
Unto the sweeter Bosome of my Fair.
And yet poor Flowers! I pitty your hard Fate,
You have but chang’d, not better’d your Estate:
What boots it you t’have scap’d cold Winters breath,
To find, like me, by Flames a sudden death?
- Sir Edward Sherburne, Salmacis (1651), 'Violets in Thaumantia’s Bosome'

Here the violet bows to greet
Her with homage to her feet;
- Robert Heath, Clarastella (1650), 'On Clarastella Walking in Her Garden'

See how this Violet which before
  Hung sullenly her drooping head,
As angry at the ground that bore
  The purple treasure which she spread,
Doth smilingly erected grow,
Transplanted to those hills of snow.
And whilst the pillows of thy breast
  Do her reclining head sustain,
She swells with pride to be so blest,
  And doth all other flowers disdain,
Yet weeps that dew which kissed her last,
To see her odours so surpast.
Poor flower! how far deceiv’d thou wert,
  To think the riches of the morn,
Or all the sweets she can impart
  Could these or sweeten or adorn,
Since thou from them do’st borrow scent,
And they to thee lend ornament.
- Sir Thomas Stanley, 'On a Violet in Her Breast'

[T]hat queen
Of secrecy, the violet:
- John Keats, Answer to a Sonnet Ending Thus—
  "Dark eyes are dearer far
  Than those that made the hyacinthine bell."
  By J. H. Reynolds.

Violets! — deep-blue violets!
April's loveliest coronets!
There are no flowers grow in the vale,
Kiss'd by the dew, wooed by the gale, —
None by the dew of the twilight wet,
So sweet as the deep-blue violet!
- Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The Improvisatrice (1824), 'The Violet'

Though many a flower may win my praise,
The violet has my love;
I did not pass my childish days
In garden or in grove:
My garden was the window-seat,
Upon whose edge was set
A little vase—the fair, the sweet—
It was the violet.
- Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The Literary Souvenir, 1831 (1830), 'The Violet', also published in The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

I had not thought of violets late,
The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet
In wistful April days, when lovers mate
And wander through the fields in raptures sweet.
The thought of violets meant florists’ shops,
And bows and pins, and perfumed papers fine;
And garish lights, and mincing little fops
And cabarets and soaps, and deadening wines.
So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed,
I had forgot wide fields; and clear brown streams;
The perfect loveliness that God has made,—
Wild violets shy and Heaven-mounting dreams.
And now—unwittingly, you’ve made me dream
Of violets, and my soul’s forgotten gleam.
- Alice Dunbar Nelson, 'Sonnet'

Quixote: The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks!
- Tennessee Williams, Camino Real (1953), Block Sixteen

Do you think amethysts can be the souls of good violets?
- L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables (1908), Chapter XIII. The Delights of Anticipation

"You are the only person who loves me in the world," said Elizabeth. "When you talk to me I smell violets."
"You talk in the language of the violets, Miss Shirley."
- L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Windy Poplars (1936), Chapters 8 & 10

[E]ven if fall she must, it was to lie on the earth and moulder sweetly into the roots of violets.
- Virginia Woolf, The Lady in the Looking Glass (1929)

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