Wooed by the June day’s fervent breath,

Violets opened their violet eyes.

—LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.

The wind, that poet of the elements,

Tonight comes whistling down our tropic lanes,

And wakes the slumbrous hours with sweet refrains.

Before the pilgrim minstrel violets place

The purple censers of their fervent youth.

—MARY ASHLEY TOWNSEND.

Now in snowdrops pure and pale

Breaks the sere grass; the violet rends her veil.

—HENRY G. HEWLETT.

The violet’s charms I prize, indeed,

So modest ’tis, and fair.

—JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE.

Seek the bank where flowering elders crowd,

Where scattered wild the lily of the vale

Its balmy essence breathes; where cowslips hang

The dewy head, where purple violets lurk

With all the lowly children of the shade.

—JAMES THOMSON.

So then the world’s repeating its old story?

Once more, thank God, its fairest page we turn!

The violets and mayflowers, like the glory

Of gold and color in old missals, burn

With fadeless shimmering;

These are its headings and vignettes. The heart

Beats quicker when the Book of Life apart

Falls at the page of Spring!

—JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE.

Currents of fragrance, from the orange-tree,

And sward of violets, breathing to and fro,

Mingle, and wandering out upon the sea,

Refresh the idle boatman where they blow.

—WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

Close by the roots of moss-grown stumps,

The sweetest and the first to blow,

The blue-eyed violets, in clumps,

Kiss one another as they grow.

—ANONYMOUS.

The purple heath and golden broom

On moory mountains catch the gale,

O’er lawns the lily sheds perfume,

The violet in the vale.

—JAMES MONTGOMERY.

She who sung so gently to the lute

Her dream of home, steals timidly away,

Shrinking as violets do in summer’s ray.

—THOMAS MOORE.

Lead me where amid the tranquil vale

The broken streamlet flows in silver light;

And I will linger when the gale

O’er the bank of violets sighs,

Listening to hear its softened sounds arise.

—ROBERT SOUTHEY.

In lower pools that see

All their marges clothed all around

With the innumerable lily;

Whence the golden-girdled bee

Flits through flowering rush to fret

White or duskier violet.

—ALGERNON C. SWINBURNE.

Blue violets, blithe violets,

Who that is human e’er forgets

Your brightness and your blithesomeness,

Your innocent meek tenderness,

That e’er hath stood in budding wood

And seen you at his feet,

Like rarest elves that deck themselves

In fairyhood complete,

Though blue as mist the sun has kissed

In valleys wild and sweet?

—EMILY S. OAKEY.

Violets, sweet tenants of the shade,

In purple’s richest pride arrayed,

Your errand here fulfil;

Go bid the artist’s simple stain

Your lustre imitate in vain,

And match your Master’s skill.

—ANONYMOUS.

They are the nation of the bees,

Born from the breath of flowers.

Low in the violet’s breast of blue

For treasured food they sink;

They know the flowers that hold the dew

For their small race to drink.

—ROBERT STEPHEN HAWKER.

Sweet-brier, leaning on the crag

That the lady-fern hides under;

Harebells, violets white and blue:

Who has sweeter flowers, I wonder?

—LUCY LARCOM.

Violet, delicate, sweet,

Down in the deep of the wood,

Hid in thy still retreat,

Far from the sound of the street,

Man and his merciless mood.

—COSMO MONKHOUSE.

I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows,

Where ox-lips and the nodding violet grows.

—WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

Under foot the violet,

Crocus and hyacinth, with rich inlay,

Broidered the ground.

—JOHN MILTON.

In my veins a music as of boughs

When the cool aspen-fingers of the rain

Feel for the eyelids of the earth in spring.

In every vein quick life; within my soul

The meekness of some sweet eternity

Forgot; and in my eyes soft violet-thoughts

That widen’d in the eye-ball to the light,

And peep’d, and trembled chilly back to the soul

Like leaves of violets closing.

—ROBERT BUCHANAN.

A little child with wondering, wide blue eyes

Shining with ecstasy, yet dimmed with tears,

As though a sudden joy strove with her fears