"Speak, my sweet violet, answer and tell,
How you have grown up and flourished so well,
And look so contented, where lonely you dwell,
And we thus by accident meet?"

Then the Violet answers, and tells the child why it is so contented, and
how it is able to hold up its head, and where its pretty blue petals come
from. But I will not recite the remainder of the poem, for I am sure my
readers do not need to be told who made the flowers, and who taught them to
bloom so sweetly in their wild haunts.

The early flowers of spring! I loved them fondly when a child; but now I am
a man, I love them still more. Shall I tell you why, dear child? There is
something sad in the reason, and yet it is not all sadness. I had a
sister--I _had_ a sister. Ah! that tells the tale. I have no sister
now! The dearest companion of my early rambles among the flowers--herself
the fairest and sweetest of them all--has fallen before the scythe of
Death. She has gone now to a world of perpetual spring, and the flowers she
loved so well are blooming over her grave. She faded away in the early
spring, and we laid her to rest where her mother had long been sleeping. By
the side of the streamlet where we used to play in the sunny days of
childhood, and where the Dandelion grew, and the Butter-cup, and the
Violet--there is now the form of her I tenderly loved.

But my strain is sad--too sad. I will sing, and be cheerful.

Alas! how soon
The things of earth we love most fondly perish!
Why died the flower our hearts had learned to cherish?
Why, ere 'twas noon?