Winter Violets

And now for a poem that speaks of winter and of one of my favorite little wildflowers. Do flowers take your mind to beautiful places like the gift of a few violets did for the author of this poem?

Winter Violets
by Edith Nesbit, 1858 - 1924
Author of "The Railway Children"

Death-white azaleas watched beside my bed,
And tried to tell me tales of Southern lands;
But they in hothouse air were born and bred,
And they were gathered by a stranger's hands:
They were not sweet, they never had been free,
And all their pallid beauty had no voice for me.

And all I longed for was one common flower
Fed by soft mists and rainy English air,
A flower that knew the woods, the leafless bower,
The wet, green moss, the hedges sharp and bare—
A flower that spoke my language, and could tell
Of all the woods and ways my heart remembers well.

Then came your violets—and at once I heard
The sparrows chatter on the dripping eaves,
The full stream's babbling inarticulate word,
The plash of rain on big wet ivy-leaves;
I saw the woods where thick the dead leaves lie,
And smelt the fresh earth's scent—the scent of memory.

The unleafed trees—the lichens green and gray,
The wide sad-coloured meadows, and the brown
Fields that sleep now, and dream of harvest day,
Hiding their seeds like hopes in hearts pent down—
A thousand dreams, a thousand memories
Your violets' voices breathed in unheard melodies—

Unheard by all but me. I heard, I blessed
The little English, English-speaking things
For their sweet selves that laid my wish to rest,
For their sweet help that lent my dreaming wings;
And, most of all, for all the thoughts of you
Which make them smell more sweet than other violets do.