On NLI’s 25th Earth Day, we invite you to celebrate nature’s lowly childhood friends: buttercups, daisies, dandelions, and – violets!

Children explore and discover the wonders of nature within an intimate sensory envelope as they move around, playfully interacting, absorbing the indelible sights, sounds, and smells of ecosystems. Poets cradle those memories, transforming them later into the essence enveloping the microcosm of childhood within the macrocosm beyond.

Poems about the common violet symbolize life’s quiet, fleeting beauty connected to the larger pulse of life on Earth.

“The Violet in the Garden”
By an Unknown Author

In the garden, deep and green,
A tiny flower can be seen.
Purple petals, bright and fair,
Dancing gently in the air.

Violet, violet, small and sweet,
You are a flower I love to greet.
With a smile, you nod your head,
And tell the stories of the bed.