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The Violet Book - Willis Boyd Allen
The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Violet Book, by Willis Boyd Allen
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The Violet Book
Author: Willis Boyd Allen
Release Date: February 19, 2013 [EBook #42134]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VIOLET BOOK ***
Produced by Greg Bergquist, Matthew Wheaton and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
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
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