Keep love for youth, and violets for the spring:
Or if these bloom when worn-out autumn grieves,
Let them lie hid in double shade of leaves,
Their own, and others dropped down withering;
For violets suit when home birds build and sing,
Not when the outbound bird a passage cleaves;
Not with dry stubble of mown harvest sheaves,
But when the green world buds to blossoming.
Keep violets for the spring, and love for youth,
Love that should dwell with beauty, mirth, and hope:
Or if a later sadder love be born,
Let this not look for grace beyond its scope,
But give itself, nor plead for answering truth—
A grateful Ruth tho' gleaning scanty corn*.
Or if these bloom when worn-out autumn grieves,
Let them lie hid in double shade of leaves,
Their own, and others dropped down withering;
For violets suit when home birds build and sing,
Not when the outbound bird a passage cleaves;
Not with dry stubble of mown harvest sheaves,
But when the green world buds to blossoming.
Keep violets for the spring, and love for youth,
Love that should dwell with beauty, mirth, and hope:
Or if a later sadder love be born,
Let this not look for grace beyond its scope,
But give itself, nor plead for answering truth—
A grateful Ruth tho' gleaning scanty corn*.
--Christina Rosetti; Macmillan's Magazine; NOV, 1868
*Book of Ruth. Landowners were required not to glean (gather grain crops) overly zealously; they were supposed to leave something behind for the poor. Ruth, who moved from her home in Moab to Israel with her Israelite mother-in-law Naomi (after both were widowed), gleaned to support both of them. The landowner eventually fell in love with her and married her; she became an ancestress of Christ.
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3 comments:
I enjoyed reading this. And the violets are good to look at.
Thanks; Christina Rossetti is a favourite.
I like Rossetti, too. That's why I like to run her stuff. (When I got started, I was heavily into Gerard Manley Hopkins but have looked around more & more.)
With Biblical illiteracy growing, basic references that come up in literature blow right past a lot of people, unless there's some sort of foot notes.
I like the violets, too. I'm not sure if this was a fall picture or not (free domain on the internet), but the brown leaves suggested autumn. Actual violets in autumn would be extremely rare, if they could be found at all (hence the poem). The foliage, oddly enough, reminds me more of what you find on California poppies. I'm used to violets having more heart-shaped leaves.
My very earliest years were spent in the Midwestern U.S. (though I grew up in the Southwest, so that's where I consider myself "from"). I still have a vague memory of picking wild violets when I was about 4 and bringing them home to my parents. (I was a "roamer" from a very early age!) When I returned to the Midwest and then went to the South for school, military and first years of marriage, I was around the violets all over again!
Thanks for your interest.
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