The yellows, blues, The purple violets and marigolds Shall as a carpet hang upon thy grave While summer days do last. [42] Act IV, Scene II. On another occasion, with a broad sweeping gesture, Shakespeare mentions The violets that strew The green lap of the new-come Spring. In "Sonnet XCIX" he writes: The forward violet thus did I chide: Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal the sweet that smells If not from my love's breath? The purple pride Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed. [Illustration: SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHPLACE, STRATFORD-UPON-AVON] Bacon deemed it most necessary "to know what flowers and plants do best perfume the air," and he thought "that which above all others yields the sweetest smell is the violet, and next to that the musk-rose." (See page 44.) "Perhaps of all Warwickshire flowers," writes a native of Shakespeare's country, "none are so plentiful as violets; our own little churchyard of Whitechurch is sheeted with them. They grow in every hedgebank until the whole air is filled with their fragrance. The wastes near Stratford are sometimes purple as far as the eyes can see with the flowers of _viola canina_. Our English violets are twelve in number. The plant is still used in medicine and acquired of late a notoriety as a suggested cancer cure; and in Shakespeare's time was eaten raw with onions and lettuces and also mingled in broth and used to garnish dishes, while crystallized violets are not unknown in the present day." For the beauty of its form, for the depth and richness of its color, for the graceful drooping of its stalk and the nodding of its head, for its lovely heart-shaped leaf and above all for its delicious perfume, the violet is admired. Then when we gaze into its tiny face and note the delicacy of its veins, which Shakespeare so often mentions, we gain a sense of its deeper beauty and significance. Dr. Forbes Watson observed: "I give one instance of Nature's care for the look of the stamens and pistils of a flower. In the blossom of the Scented Violet the stamens form, by their convergence, a little orange beak. At the end of this beak is the summit of the pistil, a tiny speck of green, but barely visible to the naked eye. Yet small as it is, it completes the color of the flower, by softening the orange, and we can distinctly see that if this mere point were removed, there would be imperfection for the want of it." St. Francis de Sales, a contemporary of Shakespeare, gave a lovely description of the flower when he said: "A true widow is in the Church as a March Violet, shedding around an exquisite perfume by the fragrance of her devotion and always hidden under the ample leaves of her lowliness and by her subdued coloring, showing the spirit of her mortification. She seeks untrodden and solitary places."