A Garden of Verses: Julia Dorr’s Floral Inspirations and Poetic Refuge

February 13, 1825

On this day, Julia Dorr, affectionately known as Rutland’s poet and Vermont’s unofficial poet laureate, was born.

As a young girl, Julia wrote under the pseudonyms Flora and Florilla, blossoming into a poet whose lyrical imagery captivated even William Cullen Bryant, who praised the beauty of her work. Ralph Waldo Emerson admired her poem “Outgrown” so much that he included it in his anthology Parnassus.

Imagine Julia seated in her cozy study beside the parlor, a window before her that looks out onto the flower garden she called “her refuge and her inspiration.”

Her poetry brings us into this garden world, alive with blooms, buzzing bees, and the tender interplay of nature’s finest moments.

Roly-poly honey bee,
Humming in the clover,
Under you, the tossing leaves
And the blue sky over,
Why are you so busy, pray?
Never still a minute,
Hovering now above a flower.
Now half-buried in it!

Dorr’s honeybee flits tirelessly, a symbol of nature's ceaseless rhythm and joy.

From the bright meadows to the shy violets growing over rocky slopes, her poems cast vivid images:

And all the meadows, wide unrolled,
Were green and silver, green and gold,
Where buttercups and daisies spun
Their shining tissues in the sun.

And flowers like the sweet blue violet and stately lilies come alive in her words:

I know a spot where the wild vines creep,
And the coral moss-cups grow,
And where at the foot of the rocky steep,
The sweet blue violets blow.

And the stately lilies stand Fair in the silvery light,
Like saintly vestals, pale in prayer;
Their pure breath sanctifies the air,
As its fragrance fills the night.

Her garden poems extend to fragrant roses, delicate mignonette, and the blue-eyed violet—the humble and the grand entwined.

Dorr’s gift was also in capturing the tender challenges of choice and beauty, as in her poem “Choosing,” where she reflects on the difficult art of selection amidst abundance and thorns alike:

Life is so full, so sweet—
How can I choose?
If I gather this rose,
That I must lose!
All are not for me to wear;
I can only have my share;
Thorns are hiding here and there;
How can I choose?

Her longing heart shines in “Homesick,” as she dreams from afar of her garden’s treasures—the lilies, roses, larkspurs, hollyhocks, bees, and butterflies in a “glad and gay turmoil.”

In “An Answer to a Valentine,” winter’s cold gray skies melt away with the warmth of love, transforming snowflakes into apple blooms:

My true love sent me a valentine
All on a winter's day,
And suddenly the cold gray skies
Grew soft and warm as May!
The snowflakes changed to apple blooms,
A pink- white fluttering crowd,
And on the swaying maple boughs
The robins sang aloud.

Julia Dorr passed just before her 88th birthday in 1913. In Rutland's Evergreen Cemetery, she lies with her husband Seneca, beneath a shared tombstone engraved with her poem “Beyond,” a poignant voyage of hope and love sailing into the eternal dawn:

Beyond the sunset's crimson bars,
Beyond the twilight and the stars,
Beyond the midnight and the dark,
Sail on, sail on, O happy barque.
Into the dawn of that Tomorrow
Where hearts shall find the end of sorrow
And Love shall find its own!

Julia Dorr’s poetry remains a tender invitation to find refuge and inspiration in the beauty of a garden, in the flutter of petals and wings, and in the heartfelt rhythms of life itself.