The Violet
Down in a green and shady bedA modest violet grew;Its stalk was bent, it hung its head,As if to hide from view.
And yet it was a lovely flower,No colours bright and fair;It might have graced a rosy bower,Instead of hiding there.
Yet there it was content to bloom,In modest tints arrayed;And there diffused its sweet perfume,Within the silent shade.
Then let me to the valley go,This pretty flower to see;That I may also learn to growIn sweet humility.
Words in this poem
- graced a.
- Endowed with grace; beautiful; full of graces; honorable.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Violet is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems Every Child Should Know The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library, Project Gutenberg ebook #16436; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Mary E. Burt, The Violet, in Poems Every Child Should Know (1904), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16436, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/poems-every-child/the-violet.html, id L25178.
Form and metre
The Violet is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%).
See other poems in common measure.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABAB bedA · grewB · headA · viewB
- 2 ABAB flowerA · fairB · bowerA · thereB
- 3 ABAB bloomA · arrayedB · perfumeA · shadeB
- 4 ABAB goA · seeB · growA · humilityB
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against common measure. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Down in a green and shady bed | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| A modest violet grew; | 7 | ·/˘/˘˘· |
| Its stalk was bent, it hung its head, | 8 | ········ |
| As if to hide from view. | 6 | ······ |
| And yet it was a lovely flower, | 9 | ·····/˘/˘ |
| No colours bright and fair; | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| It might have graced a rosy bower, | 9 | ·····/˘/˘ |
| Instead of hiding there. | 6 | ˘/·/˘· |
| Yet there it was content to bloom, | 8 | ····/˘·· |
| In modest tints arrayed; | 6 | ·/˘·˘/ |
| And there diffused its sweet perfume, | 8 | ··˘/··˘/ |
| Within the silent shade. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Then let me to the valley go, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| This pretty flower to see; | 7 | ·/˘/˘·· |
| That I may also learn to grow | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| In sweet humility. | 6 | ··˘/˘˘ |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.