Page:The Romance of Nature; or, The Flower-Seasons Illustrated.djvu/130

72 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.

Sir Henry Wotton in his most elegant compliments to the Queen of Bohemia, says

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.