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Artful Anticks

Chapter 23: The Professor and the White Violet
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About This Book

A collection of short, humorous poems and light fables that animate animals, children, and fairies to expose human foibles through playful rhyme and gentle irony. Pieces range from brief narrative verses to comic monologues and a short stage piece, typically concluding with a witty reversal or moral sting. Imagery moves between domestic detail and fanciful incident, and the poems vary in meter and length to keep tone brisk. Overall the work favors whimsical satire, clever wordplay, and anthropomorphic scenarios intended to amuse while lightly admonishing readers about pride, industry, and pretension.

The Professor and the White Violet

The Professor.
Tell me, little violet white,
If you will be so polite,
Tell me how it came that you
Lost your pretty purple hue?
Were you blanched with sudden fears?
Were you bleached with fairies’ tears?
Or was Dame Nature out of blue,
Violet, when she came to you?

The Violet.
Tell me, silly mortal, first,
Ere I satisfy your thirst
For the truth concerning me—
Why you are not like a tree?
Tell me why you move around,
Trying different kinds of ground,
With your funny legs and boots
In the place of proper roots?
Tell me, mortal, why your head,
Where green branches ought to spread,
Is as shiny smooth as glass,
With just a fringe of frosty grass?
Tell me—Why, he’s gone away!
Wonder why he wouldn’t stay?
Can he be—well, I declare!—
Sensitive about his hair?