BESIDE the dusty road of life, <br />Deflower'd with toil and foul with strife, <br />Lie hid within a charm of dew <br />Pure harbours made for me and you. <br /> <br />In such a shadowy nook is set <br />Rest's purple-winged violet; <br />It nods upon the fitful breeze <br />Born in the fount's interstices;-- <br /> <br />That fount of joy for travellers made, <br />Ensconc'd within a dappled shade, <br />Where still its wings our violet lifts <br />Beneath the pulsing air that shifts;-- <br /> <br />The little fount that bubbles there <br />Under a veil of maiden-hair, <br />And coils through many a liquid fold <br />Its crystal waters dusk and cold. <br /> <br />So small the fount, a hidden thing,-- <br />So weak the violet's throbbing wing,-- <br />The haughty world in dust rides by, <br />Without a thought, without a sigh. <br /> <br />Loud, in a riot of speed and glare, <br />About their noisy work men fare; <br />With shriek of engine, yell of horn, <br />They glorify a world new-born. <br /> <br />We love the old, the timid ways, <br />The loose bough shutting out the blaze, <br />The murmur of an ancient rhyme, <br />Heard faintly in the ear of Time. <br /> <br />And spirits, here and there, who still <br />Prefer the mill-stream to the mill, <br />To riot, quiet, and to speed <br />The dance of rooted water-weed. <br /> <br />Across a rood or two of grass, <br />Unseen, into our realm will pass, <br />Will lean above the whispering spring, <br />And hear the hidden runnel sing. <br /> <br />And then the crimson cheek will choose <br />The rainbow of the pulsing dews; <br />Then silence calm the 'wilder'd brain, <br />And life grow sanctified again.<br /><br />Edmund William Gosse<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-violet-8/
