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Spring, clustering together, the purple and the white, hiding among their broad heart-shaped leaves, and, timidly unclosing their soft petals, filling the air with the sweetest of all sweet odours?
William Habington, in his poems to Castara, thus prettily alludes to the retiring modesty of this oft-praised flower.
Like the Violet, which alone
Prospers in some happy shade,
My Castara lives unknown,
To no looser eye betraid,
For she's to herself untrue
Who delights i' the public view.
Sir Henry Wotton in his most elegant compliments to the Queen of Bohemia, says
Ye Violets that first appeare
By your pure purple mantles known,
Like the proud virgins of the yeare,
As if the Spring were all your own;
What are ye, when the rose is blown?
To these lines, which, beautiful as they are, seem like a depreciation of our gentle friend we have a most complete and flattering contradiction from the melodious lyre of Herrick. We find him, in the following lines, allowing the Violet precedence of the rose:—
Welcome, maids of honour,
You doe bring
In the Spring;
And wait upon her.
