In “The Violets,” the persona experiences a transition from childhood innocence to experience, sparking the process of maturation. This idea of childhood innocence is a Romantic ideal, and the process of growth that one experiences from this state of innocence to adulthood takes place when the persona learns about the inevitability of time. The dialogue, “Where’s morning gone?” is representative of this realisation, with the rhetorical question reflecting the child’s confusion at this stage of life when one is innocent and unburdened by certain mature knowledge. Also, the noun, “thing,” in the emotive lines, “used my tears to scold the thing that I could not grasp or name that, while I slept, had stolen from me,” refers to time and its namelessness symbolises the fact that it is abstract and unreturning, and incomprehensible to a child. This is what makes a child innocent and, Romantically invested; this is what Harwood is shown to value through her poetry. The emotive word, “tears,” and the dramatic verb, “stolen,” further exemplifies the harsh realities that accompany maturation and signify a loss of innocence. In these lines of the third stanza, there is a tone of sadness and despondency as the persona comes to terms with what the inevitability of time means for one’s life: that, regardless of when the process of maturation begins, one’s time is always limited. As Harwood’s poetry deals with the significant universal themes of personal growth, maturation and loss of innocence…
