Love itself shall slumber on

For the past couple of years I’ve brought some violets in from the garden in February and planted them up in a couple of Wedgwood china tea cups, which belonged to my mother. I enjoy the feelings of fond remembrance of her that they evoke without fail every time.


Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory—
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the belovèd’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)