midnight
`` I 've been musing , and dreaming dreams , and wishing I was a poet , '' said this tall , thin , languid-looking man , whose abnormally keen gray eyes were now grown a little absent . `` It 's only a fancy , you know -- perhaps something could be made of it by a fellow who could rhyme -- '' `` But what is it ? '' Lionel interposed . `` Well , '' said the other , still idly staring into the fire before him , `` I think I would call it ` The Cry of the Violets ' -- the violets that are sold in bunches at the head of the Haymarket at midnight . Do n't you fancy there might be something in it -- if you think of where they come from -- the woods and copses , children playing , and all that -- and of what they 've come to -- the gas-glare and drunken laughter and jeers . I would make them tell their own story -- I would make them cry to Heaven for swift death and oblivion before the last degradation of being pinned on to the flaunting dress . '' And then again he said : `` No , I do n't suppose there 's any thing in it ; but I 'll tell you what made me think of it .