Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Violets (Viola)
Early violets blue and white
Dying for their love of light.
Edwin Arnold—Almond Blossoms.
Deep violets, you liken to
The kindest eyes that look on you,
Without a thought disloyal.
E. B. Browning—A Flower in a Letter.
Stars will blossom in the darkness,
Violets bloom beneath the snow.
Julia C. R. Dorr—For a Silver Wedding.
Again the violet of our early days
Drinks beauteous azure from the golden sun,
And kindles into fragrance at his blaze.
Ebenezer Elliott—Miscellaneous Poems. Spring.
Cold blows the wind against the hill,
And cold upon the plain;
I sit me by the bank, until
The violets come again.
Richard Garnett—Violets.
A vi’let on the meadow grew,
That no one saw, that no one knew,
It was a modest flower.
A shepherdess pass’d by that way—
Light-footed, pretty and so gay;
That way she came,
Softly warbling forth her lay.
Goethe—The Violet. Frederick Ricord’s trans.
A blossom of returning light,
An April flower of sun and dew;
The earth and sky, the day and night
Are melted in her depth of blue!
Dora Read Goodale—Blue Violets.
The modest, lowly violet
In leaves of tender green is set;
So rich she cannot hide from view,
But covers all the bank with blue.
Dora Read Goodale—Spring Scatters Far and Wide.
The violets prattle and titter,
And gaze on the stars high above.
Heine—Book of Songs. Lyrical Interlude. 9.
The eyes of spring, so azure,
Are peeping from the ground;
They are the darling violets,
That I in nosegays bound.
Heine—Book of Songs. New Spring. 13.
Welcome, maids of honor,
You doe bring
In the spring,
And wait upon her.
Herrick—To Violets.
The violet is a nun.
Hood—Flowers.
We are violets blue,
For our sweetness found
Careless in the mossy shades,
Looking on the ground.
Love’s dropp’d eyelids and a kiss,—
Such our breath and blueness is.
Leigh Hunt—Songs and Chorus of the Flowers. Violets.
And shade the violets,
That they may bind the moss in leafy nets.
Keats—I Stood Tiptoe Upon a Little Hill.
Violet! sweet violet!
Thine eyes are full of tears;
Are they wet
Even yet
With the thought of other years?
Lowell—Song.
Winds wander, and dews drip earthward;
Rains fall, suns rise and set;
Earth whirls, and all but to prosper
A poor little violet.
Lowell—The Changeling.
The violets were past their prime,
Yet their departing breath
Was sweeter, in the blast of death,
Than all the lavish fragrance of the time.
Montgomery—The Adventure of a Star.
Hath the pearl less whiteness
Because of its birth?
Hath the violet less brightness
For growing near earth?
Moore—Desmond’s Song.
Steals timidly away,
Shrinking as violets do in summer’s ray.
Moore—Lalla Rookh. Veiled Prophet of Khorassan.
Surely as cometh the Winter, I know
There are Spring violets under the snow.
R. H. Newell (Orpheus C. Kerr)—Spring Violets under the Snow.
The violet thinks, with her timid blue eye,
To pass for a blossom enchantingly shy.
Frances S. Osgood—Garden Gossip. St. 3.
The violets whisper from the shade
Which their own leaves have made:
Men scent our fragrance on the air,
Yet take no heed
Of humble lessons we would read.
Christina G. Rossetti—“Consider the Lilies of the Field.” L. 13.
Who are the violets now
That strew the green lap of the new come spring.
Richard II. Act V. Sc. 2. L. 46.
The sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour!
Twelfth Night. Act I. Sc. 1. L. 5.
Violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes,
Or Cytherea’s breath.
Winter’s Tale. Act IV. Sc. 4. L. 120.
And the violet lay dead while the odour flew
On the wings of the wind o’er the waters blue.
Shelley—Music.
Oh! faint delicious spring-time violet,
Thine odor like a key,
Turns noiselessly in memory’s wards to let
A thought of sorrow free.
W. W. Story—The Violet.
The smell of violets, hidden in the green,
Pour’d back into my empty soul and frame
The times when I remembered to have been
Joyful and free from blame.
Tennyson—Dream of Fair Women. St. 20.
And from his ashes may be made
The violet of his native land.
Tennyson—In Memoriam. XVIII.
And in my breast
Spring wakens too; and my regret
Becomes an April violet,
And buds and blossoms like the rest.
Tennyson—In Memoriam. CXV.
A humble flower long time I pined
Upon the solitary plain,
And trembled at the angry wind,
And shrunk before the bitter rain.
And oh! ’twas in a blessed hour
A passing wanderer chanced to see,
And, pitying the lonely flower,
To stoop and gather me.
Thackeray—Song of the Violet.
Banks that slope to the southern sky
Where languid violets love to lie.
Sarah Helen Whitman—Wood Walks in Spring. L. 11.
The violets of five seasons reappear
And fade, unseen by any human eye.
Wordsworth—Nutting.
A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
Fair as a star when only one
Is shining in the sky.
Wordsworth—She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways.
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—To his Mistress the Queen of Bohemia.