Painting: Mary Vaux Walcott, 1860 USA–1940 Canada, Fringed Gentian (Gentiana crinita), 1905, watercolor on paper, 9 7/8 x 7 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum
The Fringed Gentian
Lift up, thy dewy fringed eyes,
Oh, little Alpine flower,
The tear that trembling on them lies
Has sympathetic power
To move my own, for I, too, dream
With thee of distant heights
Whose lofty peaks are all agleam
With rosy dazzling lights.
Who dreams of wider spheres revealed
Up higher near the sky
Within the valley's narrow field
Cannot contented lie.
Who longs for mountain breezes rare
Is restless down below
Like me for stronger purer air
Thou pinest, too, I know.
Where aspirations, hopes, desires
Combining fondly dwell,
Where burn the never-dying flowers
Of Genius' wondrous spell.
Such towering summits would I reach
Who climb and grope in vain,
Oh, little flower, the secret teach
The weary way make plain.
When whisper blossom in thy sleep
How I may upward climb
The Alpine path, so hard, so steep
That leads to heights sublime.
How I may reach that far-off goal
Of true and honored fame
And write upon its shining scroll
A woman's humble name.
L. M. Montgomery refers to in The Alpine Path saying:
"
Many years ago, when I was still a child, I clipped from a current magazine
a bit of verse, entitled "To the Fringed Gentian," and pasted it on the
corner of the little portfolio on which I wrote my letters and school essays.
Every time I opened the portfolio I read one of those verses over; it was
the key-note of my every aim and ambition:
It is indeed a "hard and steep" path; and if any word I can write
will assist or encourage another pilgrim along that path, that word I gladly
and willingly write."
It is also mentioned in the Emily series as an embodiment of Emily's desire to be an author and to be successful
The fringed gentian is a flowering biennial or annual plant (Gentianopsis crinita) of eastern North America, having blue, bell-shaped flowers with fringed petals.
Emily Dickinson and William Cullen Bryant both
wrote poetic tributes to this flower as well, which you may read below:
God Made a Little
Gentian
by Emily Dickinson
God made a little gentian;
It tried to be a rose
And failed, and all the summer laughed.
But just before the snows
There came a purple creature
That ravished all the hill;
And summer hid her forehead,
And mockery was still.
The frosts were her condition;
The Tyrian would not come
Until the North evoked it.
"Creator! shall I bloom?"
To the Fringed Gentian
by William Cullen Bryant
THOU blossom bright with autumn dew,
And colored with the heaven's own blue,
That openest when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night.
Thou comest not when violets lean
O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen,
Or columbines, in purple dressed,
Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest.
Thou waitest late and com'st alone,
When woods are bare and birds are flown,
And frosts and shortening days portend
The aged year is near his end.
Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
Look through its fringes to the sky,
Blue--blue--as if that sky let fall
A flower from its cerulean wall.
I would that thus, when I shall see
The hour of death draw near to me,
Hope, blossoming within my heart,
May look to heaven as I depart.
Last Updated 03.28.04
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