March Violets
The refrain, "Can you tell them apart?" is repeated once after the first stanza, twice after the second and then changed at the end to, "Can you tear them apart?"
This is the hint that finally leads the audience to suspect that this is about pairs- of perhaps animalistic people who although together now are marching to their death.
The refrain, "Can you tell them apart?" is repeated once after the first stanza, twice after the second and then changed at the end to, "Can you tear them apart?"
This is the hint that finally leads the audience to suspect that this is about pairs- of perhaps animalistic people who although together now are marching to their death.
Immediately I am feeling that this is written by a person with a religious background in the Judeo-Christian sense of the word. I see phrases like "vine", "coming in twos", "dust to dust/ ash to ash." These words lend a spiritual nature to the poem-- and I feel like there is cynicism involved.
I don't know but are violets a funeral flower? I know the Ides of March is a dismal day, Caesar's prophesied assassination and a future literary device.
This seems like a indictment of ... something. Other lines to suggest this are, "The later they come/ The higher they climb" and "The time is right/ And the night is long/ The night is brief/ And the time is wrong."
March Violets
This seems like a indictment of ... something. Other lines to suggest this are, "The later they come/ The higher they climb" and "The time is right/ And the night is long/ The night is brief/ And the time is wrong."
March Violets
Afterward I google imaged and found this at: www.suzybalesgarden.com/blog/?p=8
"In the days when they were in fashion, the correct way to sniff violets was part of the education of Victorian ladies. A deep inhalation was considered vulgar, and young ladies were taught to take a series of short dainty sniffs. Perhaps this was wise: violets contain ionone, a sort of odoriferous sledgehammer that when breathed deeply causes numbness. After one over enthusiastic inhalation, it may be impossible to smell anything else again until the numbness leaves a few moments later. Never the less, Shakespeare spoke of them only in positive terms: “Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting, the perfume and suppliant of a minute.”
I like what you wrote about Violets and how they have been written about in other poems, such as Shakespeare. I don't know anything about flowers and it is interesting to know that people have always been fascinated by Violets. You observation made me feel as though I understand the usage in "March Violets" better. Especially in terms of war. The violets numb the people who smell them temporarily, just as war can numb (maybe not so temporarily) soldiers.
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