Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Change
Context: The bees came booming as if they had never gone,
As if hyacinths had never gone. We say
This changes and that changes. Thus the constant Violets, doves, girls, bees and hyacinths
Are inconstant objects of inconstant cause
In a universe of inconstancy. This meansNight-blue is an inconstant thing. The seraph
Is satyr in Saturn, according to his thoughts.
“The old seraph, parcel-gilded, among violets
Inhaled the appointed odor, while the doves
Rose up like phantoms from chronologies.”
Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Change
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Wallace Stevens 278
American poet 1879–1955Related quotes
A White Rose, lines 1-4, in In Bohemia (1886), p. 24.
“Roses are red
Violets are blue
Everything's possible
Nothing is true.”
Source: V for Vendetta, Vol. VIII of X
“I'd be a butterfly born in a bower,
Where roses and lilies and violets meet.”
I'd be a Butterfly, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
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He Made the saying popular on a T-Shirt he wore.
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“Roses red and violets blew,
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Canto 6, stanza 6
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book III
“Roses are red, violets are blue, I have five fingers, the middle one is for you.”
Variant: Roses are red
Violets are blue
Be very afraid
We're coming for you.
Source: The Queen of Zombie Hearts
Four Minute Essays Vol. 5 (1919), The Human Heart
“Boasting, like gilded armour, is very different inside from outside.”
Stobaeus, iii. 22. 40
Quoted by Stobaeus