FullReads

As an instance where Bryant warps the facts to suit his purpose, take his poems of the “Yellow Violet” and “The Fringed Gentian.” Of this last flower he says:–

“Thou waitest late and com’st alone,
When woods are bare and birds are
flown,
And frosts and shortening days
portend
The aged year is near his end.”

The fringed gentian belongs to September, and, when the severer frosts keep away, it runs over into October. But it does not come alone, and the woods are not bare. The closed gentian comes at the same time, and the blue and purple asters are in all their glory. Goldenrod, turtle-head, and other fall flowers also abound. When the woods are bare, which does not occur in New England till in or near November, the fringed gentian has long been dead. It is in fact killed by the first considerable frost. No, if one were to go botanizing, and take Bryant’s poem for a guide, he would not bring home any fringed gentians with him. The only flower he would find would be the witch-hazel. Yet I never see this gentian without thinking of Bryant’s poem, and feeling that he has brought it immensely nearer to us.

Bryant’s poem of the “Yellow Violet” has all his accustomed simplicity and pensiveness, but his love for the flower carries him a little beyond the facts; he makes it sweet-scented,–

“Thy faint perfume
Alone is in the virgin air;”

and he makes it the first flower of spring. I have never been able to detect any perfume in the yellow species (VIOLA ROTUNDIFOLIA). This honor belongs alone to our two white violets, VIOLA BLANDA and VIOLA CANADENSIS.

Neither is it quite true that

“Of all her train, the hands of Spring
First plant thee in the watery mould.”

Now it is an interesting point which really is our first spring flower. Which comes second or third is of less consequence, but which everywhere and in all seasons comes first; and in such a case the poet must not place the honor where it does not belong. I have no hesitation in saying that, throughout the Middle and New England States, the hepatica is the first spring flower. [Footnote: excepting, of course, the skunk-cabbage.] It is some days ahead of all others. The yellow violet belongs only to the more northern sections,–to high, cold, beechen woods, where the poet rightly places it; but in these localities, if you go to the spring woods every day, you will gather the hepatica first. I have also found the claytonia and the coltsfoot first. In a poem called “The Twenty-Seventh of March,” Bryant places both the hepatica and the arbutus before it:–

“Within the woods
Tufts of ground-laurel, creeping
underneath
The leaves of the last summer, send
their sweets
Upon the chilly air, and by the oak,
The squirrel cups, a graceful
company,
Hide in their bells, a soft aerial
blue,”–

ground-laurel being a local name for trailing arbutus, called also mayflower, and squirrel-cups for hepatica, or liver-leaf. But the yellow violet may rightly dispute for the second place.

In “The Song of the Sower” our poet covers up part of the truth with the grain. The point and moral of the song he puts in the statement, that the wheat sown in the fall lies in the ground till spring before it germinates; when, in fact, it sprouts and grows and covers the ground with “emerald blades” in the fall:–

“Fling wide the generous grain; we fling
O’er the dark mould the green of
spring.
For thick the emerald blades shall
grow,
When first the March winds melt the
snow,
And to the sleeping flowers, below,
The early bluebirds sing.
. . . . . . . .
.
Brethren, the sower’s task is done.
The seed is in its winter bed.
Now let the dark-brown mould be
spread,
To hide it from the sun,
And leave it to the kindly care
Of the still earth and brooding air,
As when the mother, from her
breast,
Lays the hushed babe apart to rest,
And shades its eyes and waits to see
How sweet its waking smile will be.
The tempest now may smite, the sleet
All night on the drowned furrow beat,
And winds that, from the cloudy hold
Of winter, breathe the bitter cold,
Stiffen to stone the mellow mould,
Yet safe shall lie the wheat;
Till, out of heaven’s unmeasured blue,
Shall walk again the genial year,
To wake with warmth and nurse with dew
The germs we lay to slumber here.”