THE VIOLET BOOK

THE VIOLET BOOK
But who hath breathed the scent of violets,
And not that moment been a lover glad?
—ARLO BATES.

Go, modest little violets, and lie upon her breast;
Your eyes will tell her something—perhaps she’ll guess the rest!

THE VIOLET BOOK

Arranged by
WILLIS BOYD ALLEN

“Such a starved bank of moss,

Till, that May morn,

Blue ran the flash across:

Violets were born.”

Browning

PHILADELPHIA
GEORGE W. JACOBS & CO.
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1909, by
GEORGE W. JACOBS & COMPANY
Published September, 1909

All rights reserved
Printed in U. S. A.

TO HER
For whom this little company of her sisters was first gathered.

PREFACE

Many of the selections in this volume are waifs and strays, found in obscure periodicals and newspapers, or in long-forgotten books on the dusty shelves of libraries. Some of them have been gathered from copyrighted works, and for the use of these the compiler owes and renders his best thanks.

Special acknowledgments are due to the following publishers and copyright holders:

The Houghton, Mifflin Company, for selections from the poems of John Greenleaf Whittier, Edith M. Thomas, Celia Thaxter, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Richard Watson Gilder, John Hay, Lucy Larcom, George E. Woodbury, Alice and Phœbe Cary, Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney, and Edmund Clarence Stedman; Messrs. Little, Brown and Company, for lines by Louise Chandler Moulton and Helen Hunt Jackson; Messrs. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, for selections from the works of Dora Read Goodale and Myrtle Reed; Messrs. Charles Scribner’s Sons, for extracts from the writings of Henry Van Dyke, Mary Mapes Dodge, Oliver Herford, and Frances Hodgson Burnett; and Messrs. Lothrop, Lee and Shepard, for permission to quote from Clinton Scollard’s work.

A STUDY IN VIOLET

Next to the rose, whose divine right to monarchy cannot be questioned, the violet is the poet’s flower. No other is mentioned so frequently, or with such affection.

It is impossible to say when this familiar flower first blossomed in literature. The “Odyssey” would not be complete without it, nor would the “Eclogues” of the Roman singer, Virgil. Ovid was fond of horticulture, and the violet was not forgotten when the bard was inditing his smooth-flowing hexameters. Pliny and Cicero, too, were violet-lovers. In the Bible there is no mention of the flower; but in Chrysostom’s “First Homily” occurs perhaps the first appearance of our little friend in Christian literature.

Chaucer’s affection for “floures” is well known. Of the many Shakspearean quotations in this field, probably the most familiar comprises the exquisite lines:

“Violets dim,

But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes

Or Cytherea’s breath.”

Passing to the more recent literary period, the individual taste of the poet becomes noticeable. Strange to relate, Wordsworth could have cared little for the shy blossom. Although he does say,

“Long as there are violets

They will have their place in story,”

he leaves it to others to tell the story,—referring to the violet only three or four times in all his voluminous writings. His counterpart in this respect, among American poets, is Longfellow, in whose musical numbers, singularly enough, the violet has almost no place at all. Nor was the flower a favorite with Tennyson, though each of his rare references to it is a gem; as this,—

“The meadow your walks have left so sweet

That wherever a March wind sighs,

He sets the jewel-prints of his feet

In violets blue as your eyes.”

American writers have, on the whole, given the violet a more prominent place than have their English brethren of the lyre. Bryant’s pages, for instance, are fragrant with its perfume, and he has, in special, immortalized the yellow variety in more than one finely turned stanza.

If most of the world’s great bards have been reluctant to give Lady Violet her due, not so the numerous rank and file of “minor poets.” The verse of Alice Cary, Lucy Larcom, Grace Greenwood, Elizabeth Akers, Adelaide Proctor and dozens of others is a garden of wild-flowers, with the violet leading the dance. Some of the prettiest conceits occur in the writings of authors so obscure that their names are unfamiliar to most readers. For instance, one must look far for a volume of poetry bearing the name of Ethel M. Kelley; yet these fine lines are attributed to her:

“In her hair the sunbeams nest,

And in her eyes the violets blow,

While in the summer of her breast

The songbird thoughts flit to and fro.”

The compiler of this book has spent many pleasant hours in culling his violets from the immense field of English and American poetry. Another volume of equal size could readily be made up from extracts containing references to the flower, to say nothing of German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Scandinavian poetry, which has not been considered in his quest.

WILLIS BOYD ALLEN

CHAPTER ONE

The silent, soft and humble heart

In the violet’s hidden sweetness breathes.

—JAMES G. PERCIVAL.

CHAPTER ONE

The air is white with snow-flakes clinging;

Between the gusts that come and go

Methinks I hear the woodlark singing.

Or can it be the breeze is bringing

The breath of violets?—Ah, no!

The air is white with snow-flakes clinging.

It is my lady’s voice that’s stringing

Its beads of gold to song; and so

Methinks I hear the woodlark singing.

The violets I see upspringing

Are in my lady’s eyes, I trow;

The air is white with snow-flakes clinging.

—JOHN PAYNE.

A chaplet on her head she wore

(Heigho, the chaplet!);

Of sweet violets therein was store—

She’s sweeter than the violet.

—EDMUND SPENSER.

Tell me, this sweet morn,

Tell me all you know,—

Tell me, was I born?

Tell me, did I grow?

Fell I from the blue

Like a drop of rain,

Then, as violets do,

Blossomed up again?

—ROBERT BUCHANAN.

Misty grew the violets of her eyes.

—HELEN B. BOSTWICK.

The violet loves the sunny bank,

The cowslip loves the lea,

The scarlet creeper loves the elm;

But I love—thee.

—BAYARD TAYLOR.

Your name pronounced brings to my heart

A feeling like the violet’s breath.

—COVENTRY PATMORE.

Out from the leaves of my “Lucille”

Falls a faded violet.

Sweet and faint as its fragrance steal

Out from the leaves of my “Lucille”

Tender memories, and I feel

A sense of longing and regret.

Out from the leaves of my “Lucille”

Falls a faded violet.

—WALTER LEARNED.

Be other brows by pleasure’s wreath

Or glory’s coronal oppressed,

To me the humblest flower seems best,

Some sweet wild bloom with dews still wet.

So, Love, but kiss a violet—

O, Love, but kiss a violet—

And fling it to my breast!

—GRACE GREENWOOD.

Within my reach!

I could have touched!

I might have chanced that way!

Soft sauntered through the village,

Sauntered as soft away!

So unsuspected violets

Within the fields lie low,

Too late for striving fingers

That passed an hour ago.

—EMILY DICKINSON.

The silent, soft and humble heart

In the violet’s hidden sweetness breathes.

—JAMES G. PERCIVAL.

Perchance the violets o’er my dust

Will half betray their buried trust,

And say, their blue eyes full of dew,

“She loved you better than you knew.”

—ELIZABETH AKERS ALLEN.

Nature does not recognize

This strife that rends the earth and skies;

No war-dreams vex the winter sleep of clover-heads and daisy-eyes:

When blood her grassy altar wets,

She sends the pitying violets

To heal the outrage with their bloom and cover it with soft regrets.

—ELIZABETH AKERS ALLEN.

Sure thou didst flourish once! and many springs,

Many bright mornings, much dew, many showers

Passed o’er thy head; many light hearts and wings,

Which now are dead, lodged in thy living bowers.

And still a new succession sings and flies;

Fresh groves grow up, and their green branches shoot

Towards the old and still enduring skies;

While the low violet thrives at their root.

—HENRY VAUGHAN.

Blue eyes

Whose sleepy lid like snow on violets lies.

—THOMAS MOORE.

Love comes and goes as the free wind blows,

That asks not, as it passes,

If it touches the head of the roses red

Or the violets down in the grasses.

—HOSEA G. BLAKE.

Little maid, a violet

Is knocking at your door,

Eagerly its message sweet

Repeating o’er and o’er:

“Some one sent me with his love,—

Take me, I implore!”

—ANONYMOUS.

Where fall the tears of love the rose appears,

And where the ground is bright with friendship’s tears,

Forget-me-not, and violets, heavenly blue,

Spring, glittering with the cheerful drops like dew.

—WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

We shall be, as we are,

(Still breathes the secret strain)

Within our Father’s loving care

When violets come again.

—EMILY S. OAKEY.

Where wind-flower and violet, amber and white,

On south-sloping brooksides should smile in the light,

O’er the cold winter beds of their late-waking roots

The frosty flake eddies, the ice crystal shoots.

—JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

When Roman fields are red with cyclamen,

And in the palace gardens you may find,

Under great leaves and sheltering briony-bind,

Clusters of cream-white violets, O then

The ruined city of immortal men

Must smile, a little to her fate resigned.

—EDMUND W. GOSSE.

Beside me, where I rest,

Thy loving hands will set

The flowers that please me best,

Moss-rose and violet.

—WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

Once in a dream I saw the flowers

That bud and bloom in Paradise;

More fair they are than waking eyes

Have seen in all this world of ours.

And faint the perfume-bearing rose,

And faint the lily on its stem,

And faint the perfect violet,

Compared with them.

—CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.

I do not know

The subtle secret of the snow,

That hides away the violets

Till April teaches them to blow.

Enough for me

Their tender loveliness to see,

Assured that little things and large

Fulfil God’s purpose equally.

—MARY BRADLEY.

Violet, sweet violet!

Thine eyes are full of tears;

Are they wet,

Even yet,

With the thoughts of other years?

Or with gladness are they full,

For the night so beautiful,

And longing for those far-off spheres?

Violet, dear violet,

Thy blue eyes are only wet

With joy and love of Him who sent thee,

And for the fulfilling sense

Of that glad obedience

Which made thee all that Nature meant thee.

—JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

CHAPTER TWO

Violets, shy violets,

How many hearts with thee compare!

—ANONYMOUS.

CHAPTER TWO

Under a mantle of frost-work and snow,

Close by the arc of the fairy-queen’s ring,

Sleeping in delicate grottoes of ice,

Clusters of violets dream of the spring.

—D. CHAUNCEY BREWER.

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 odor.

—WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

Slow rose the silken-fringèd lids, and eyes

Like violets wet with dew drank in the light.

—GRACE GREENWOOD.

The careful little violet,

She makes me think of you,

Holding her leafy petticoats

From out the morning dew.

—ALICE CARY.

The violet breathes, by our door, as sweetly

As in the air of her native East.

—WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

When the earliest violets ope

On the sunniest southern slope,

When the air is sweet and keen

Ere the full-blown flower is seen,

When that blithe, forerunning air

Breathes more hope than thou canst bear,

Thou, oh buried, broken heart,

Into quivering life shalt start.

—EDITH M. THOMAS.

The wind-flowers and the violets were still too sound asleep,

Under the snow’s warm blanket, close folded, soft and deep.

—CELIA THAXTER.

Beautiful maid, discreet,

Where is the mate that is meet,

Meet for thee—strive as he could—

Yet will I kneel at thy feet,

Fearing another one should,

Violet!

—COSMO MONKHOUSE.

Violets, shy violets,

How many hearts with thee compare,

Who hide themselves in thickest green,

And thence unseen

Ravish the enraptured air

With sweetness, dewy, fresh and fair!

—ANONYMOUS.

I think the very violets

Are looking the way you’ll come!

—ALICE CARY.

Once, long ago, in summer’s glow,

We threaded, you and I,

A garden’s maze of pleasant ways,

Whose beauty charmed the eye,—

Where violets bent in sweet content

And pinks stood proud and high.

—ELIZABETH AKERS ALLEN.

Then, feeble man, be wise, tak tent

How industry can fetch content.

Behold the bees where’er they wing,

Or through the bonny bowers o’ spring,

Where violets or roses blaw,

An’ siller dew-draps nightly fa’.

—ROBERT FERGUSON.

In her hair the sunbeams nest,

And in her eyes the violets blow,

While in the summer of her breast

The songbird thoughts flit to and fro.