Bay leaves between And primroses green Embellish the sweet violet. --EDMUND SPENSER.
Better to smell the violet cool Than sip the glowing wine; Better to hark a hidden brook Than watch a diamond shine. --GEORGE MACDONALD.
Upon the water’s velvet edge The purple blossoms breathe delight, Close nestled to the grassy sedge As sweet as dawn, as dark as night. O brook and branches, far away, My heart keeps time with you today! “The violets--the violets!” --FRANCES L. MACE.
Call the crowfoot and the crocus, Call the pale anemone, Call the violet and the daisy, Clothed with careful modesty. --PHŒBE CARY.
The mosses are wet Under chestnut and thorn With blossoms new-born Of dim violet. --JOHN A. SYMONDS.
Give me only a bud from the trees Or a blade of grass in morning dew, Or a cloudy violet clearing to blue, I could look on it forever. --SYDNEY DOBELL.
How could I forget To beg of thee, dear violet! Some of thy modesty, That blossoms here as well, unseen, As if before the world thou’dst been, O give to strengthen me. --JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
When daisies pied, and violets blue, And lady-smocks all silver white, And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue, Do paint the meadows with delight. --WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
An emerald robe o’er all the fields is drawn; Here are cowslips, there the violets appear; The rill’s low laughter, children’s joyous words, The ploughman’s chorus, with the song of birds, In mingled cadences, are heard afar and near. --JOSIAH RICE TAYLOR.
All the world is blooming, wherefore sigh? Violets amid the grasses lie, And the wild bees with their girdles bright Climb up dazzling shafts of dazzling light; And on cowslips fall, in golden play, Shadows of the swallows on their way. --MRS. WHITON-STONE.
One loves a baby face, with violets there, Violets instead of laurel in the hair, As these were all the little locks could bear. --ROBERT BROWNING.
The sea is growing summer blue, But fairer, sweeter than the smiling sky, Or bashful violet with tender eye, Is she whose love for me will never die,-- I love you, darling, only you! --ELIZABETH AKERS ALLEN.
“Use! Use! Use!” I cried impatiently;--“nothing but use! As if God never made a violet, Or hung a harebell!” --J. G. HOLLAND.
The pride of every grove I chose, The violet sweet and lily fair, The dappled pink and blushing rose, To deck my charming Chloe’s hair. --MATTHEW PRIOR.