VIOLET PANSEY, OR THREE-COLOURED VIOLET. (Viola tricolor.) THIS plant grows wild in corn fields, waste, and cultivated grounds; flowering all the summer, it varies much by culture, and from the variety of its colours, often becomes extremely beautiful in our gardens. There are now twenty different coloured violets, or heartsease, cultivated by our florists. This flower, the universal favourite of the more simple unrefined ages, is one of those in which, when we compare the diminutive and almost colourless pansy, which we find wild among the corn, with the ample rich-coloured corolla and its tissue of velvet, as is now common in many gardens, we cannot but allow that human art has made a considerable improvement; and we survey it with more pleasure, because it is not at the expense of the natural characters of the flower. This violet has numerous provincial names, all bearing some allusion to love; perhaps the most universal is that of heartsease. Class, PENTANDRIA: Order, MONOGYNIA. THE VIOLET. WHY better than the lady rose, Love I this little flower? Though many a flower may win my praise, I did not pass my childish days My garden was the window-seat, A little vase, the fair, the sweet, It was my pleasure and my pride; For health and bloom what plans I tried, I placed it in the summer shower, I placed it in the sun; My work seemed half undone. The broad leaves spread, the small buds grew, How slow they seemed to be, At last there came a tinge of blue, 'Twas worth the world to me. At length the perfume fill'd the room, I gathered two or three,-they seemed So precious in my sight, I deemed Ah! who is there but would be fain If future years could bring again My heart's world has been long o'erthrown, Their bloom is past, their breath is flown, Let nature spread her loveliest, Because I loved it first. L MISS LANDON. LE VIOLE. NoN di verdi giardin, ornati e colti, Pel periglio d'Adon, correndo in vano, LORENZO DE MEDICI. HEARTSEASE. (Viola tricolor.) I USED to love thee, simple flower, But now thou only mock'st my grief, That falls on Autumn's bosom dead. For that ne'er tells of what has been, I love thee not, thou simple flower, LONDON MAGAZINE. |