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?
Because its fragrant leaves are those
I loved in childhood's hour.

Though many a flower may win my praise,
The violet has my love;

I did not pass my childish days
In garden or in grove.

My garden was the window-seat,
Upon whose edge was set

A little vase, the fair, the sweet,
It was the violet.

It was my pleasure and my pride;
How I did watch its growth!

For health and bloom what plans I tried,
And often injured both.

I placed it in the summer shower,

I placed it in the sun;
And ever at the evening hour

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,
Shed from their purple wreath;
No flower has now so rich a bloom,
Has now so sweet a breath.

I gathered two or three,-they seemed
Such rich gifts to bestow;

So precious in my sight, I deemed
That all must think them so.

Ah! who is there but would be fain
To be a child once more;

If future years could bring again
All that they brought before!

My heart's world has been long o'erthrown,
It is no more of flowers;

Their bloom is past, their breath is flown,
Yet I recal those hours.

Let nature spread her loveliest,
By spring or summer nurst;
Yet still I love the violet best,

Because I loved it first.

L

MISS LANDON.

LE VIOLE.

NoN di verdi giardin, ornati e colti,
Del soave e dolce acre Pestano,
Veniam Madonna nella tua bianca mano;
Ma in aspre selve, e valli ombrose colti
Ove Venere afflitta, e in pensier molti

Pel periglio d'Adon, correndo in vano,
Un spino acuto al nudo piè villano
Sparse del divin sangue i boschi folti ;
Noi sommettimmo allore il bianco fiore,
Tanto che 'ldivin sangue non aggiunge
A terra, ond' il color purpureo nacque.
Non aure estive o vivi tolti a lunge
Noi nutrit' anno, ma sospir d'amore
L'aure son sute, e pianti d'Amore l'acque.

LORENZO DE MEDICI.

HEARTSEASE.

(Viola tricolor.)

I USED to love thee, simple flower,
To love thee dearly when a boy;
For thou didst seem, in childhood's hour,
The smiling type of childhood's joy.

But now thou only mock'st my grief,
By waking thoughts of pleasures fled.
Give me-give me the withered leaf,

That falls on Autumn's bosom dead.

For that ne'er tells of what has been,
But warns me what I soon shall be ;
It looks not back on pleasure's scene,
But points unto futurity.

I love thee not, thou simple flower,
For thou art gay, and I am lone;
Thy beauty died with childhood's hour-
The Heart's-case from my path is gone.

LONDON MAGAZINE.