Part 17 (1/2)

For mine are as cold and as black as jet, And I want your heavenly blue eyes!

Modest violet, maiden violet, Pray, can I borrow your blue eyes?

--ALICE CARY.

Flowers were the couch, Pansies and violets, and asphodels, And hyacinths, earth's freshest, softest lap.

--JOHN MILTON.

Flowers, of such as keep Their fragrant tissues and their heavenly hues Fresh-bathed forever in eternal dews-- The violet with her low-drooped eye, For learned modesty.

--SIDNEY LANIER.

Before the urchin well could go, She stole the whiteness of the snow; And more--the whiteness to adorn, She stole the blushes of the morn: Stole all the sweets that ether sheds On primrose buds or violet beds.

If lovers, Cupid, are thy care, Exert thy vengeance on this fair; To trial bring her stolen charms, And let her prison be my arms.

--CHARLES WYNDHAM.

Thine old-world eyes--each one a violet-- Big as the baby rose that is thy mouth-- Sets me a-dreaming. Have our eyes not met In childhood--in a garden of the South?

--HENRY A. BEERS.

May his soft foot, where it treads, Gardens thence produce, and meads, And those meddowes full be set With the rose and violet.

--ROBERT HERRICK.

I remember, I remember, The roses, red and white, The violets and the lily-cups-- Those flowers made of light.

--THOMAS HOOD.

The light drop of dew That glows in the violet's eye, In the splendor of morn, to the fugitive view, May rival a star in the sky.

--JAMES MONTGOMERY.

I saw thee weep--the big bright tear Came o'er that eye of blue: And then methought it did appear A violet dropping dew.

--LORD BYRON.

Oh Stream of Life! the violet springs But once beside thy bed; But one brief summer, on thy path, The dews of heaven are shed.

--WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

Whate'er the baffling power Sent anger and earthquake, and a thousand ills-- It made the violet flower, And the wide world with breathless beauty thrills.

--RICHARD WATSON GILDER.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The morning star of all the flowers The virgin, virgin violet.

--LORD BYRON.