Love-in-Idleness

One of the numerous names of the pansy or heartsease. Originally white, but changed to a purple colour by the fall of Cupid’s bolt upon it.

“Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell.

It fell upon a little Western flower,

Before, milk-white, now purple with love’s wound;

The maidens call it Love-in-idleness.”

Shakespeare: Midsummer Night’s Dream, ii. 2.

· ·

Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.