Great Regulars: Despite the strength and determination of

this sturdy flower, it displays humble surroundings: "Yet slight thy form, and low thy seat,/And earthward bent thy gentle eye." The flower is small and grows low to the ground, as it appears to bow its head, not showing its "gentle eye." It is unlikely that one passing by casually would even notice the little flower, and other flowers by comparison are "loftier," and they "are flaunting nigh." This little flower remains humble and unobtrusive

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Bryant's The Yellow Violet

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This otherworldly light/color may be sensed nearby as "upon the Lawn," but it also appears in trees that are very far away, and even on hillsides far from the speaker's location. She then asserts that this strange vision "almost speaks to you." She is drawing out of the reader a response that will be difficult to articulate, because she is finding herself transported by this light to an ineffable location within.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Dickinson's A Light exists in Spring

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The speaker has just described a scene of pure beauty and wonder brought about through the natural evolution of one season into another. He then asks rhetorically, what is the cause of all this magnificence and splendor. It is but a "strain of the earth's sweet being."

It reminds him of the first garden, in Eden, before the fall, before "it cloud//and sour with sinning." He thinks of the "innocent mind//in girl and boy." And most of all he remembers, "O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Gerard Manley Hopkins' Spring

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The speaker's first question poses the possibility that because he is blessed with an able Muse, he might be susceptible to flattery, which he calls "the monarch's plague." A king, and thus any person holding a lofty societal position, always has people looking for favors, and those seekers are prone to say kind things about the king simply to win those favors.

The artist who gains some critical attention during his/her own lifetime has to guard against useless criticism.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 114

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This fabulous ambrosial liquid offered for imbibing has figuratively been "stolen from nature's nooks" by the gods of domesticity. The speaker implies that his attention has been suffering "sullen sleep," instead of observing all of these magnificent God-given gifts that should inspire and motivate him. Thus he commands his lagging mood, "Wake, wake, my sleeping Hunger, wake!"

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Yogananda's Wake, Wake, My Sleeping Hunger, Wake

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