I'm a fart in a gale of wind, a humble violet under a cow pat.

-Barnes, Djuna
  Doctor. Nightwood, ch.5.

Where, like a pillow on a bed, A pregnant bank swelled up, to rest The violet's reclining head, Sat we two, one another's best.

-Donne,John
c.1595^1605  'The Ecstasy', collected in Songs and Sonnets (1633).

Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe, and pale gessamine, The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet, The glowing violet, The musk-rose, and the well attir'd woodbine, With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, And every flower that sad embroidery wears: Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, And daffadillies fill their cups with tears, To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.

-Milton,John
  Lycidas, l.142^51. rathe = early.

Iris all hues, roses, and jessamine Reared high their flourished heads between, and wrought Mosaic; underfoot the violet, Crocus, and hyacinth with rich inlay Broidered the ground, more coloured than with stone Of costliest emblem: other creature here Beast, bird, insect, or worm durst enter none; Such was their awe of man.

-Milton,John
  Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.4, l.698^705.

The vanity of translation; it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its colour and odour, as seek to transfuse from one language to another the creations of a poet. 786 The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower.

-Shelley, Percy Bysshe
A Defence of Poetry.

She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove, A maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love: Aviolet bya mossy stone Half hidden from the eye! öFair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky. She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and, oh, The difference to me!

-Wordsworth,William
  'She dwelt among the untrodden ways', complete poem (published1800).