Many echoes contribute to the undersong of this passage from John Hollander’s “Violet,” not least of which include Wallace Stevens’ “The Poems of Our Climate”:

Clear water in a brilliant bowl, / Pink and white carnations. The light / In the room more like a snowy air, / Reflecting snow;

Keats’ “To Autumn”:

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn / Among the river sallows, borne aloft / Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

Shakespeare’s Hamlet;

Since no man of aught he leaves knows, what is 't to leave betimes? Let be;

And, crucially, Spenser’s “Prothalamion”:

So ended she; and all the rest around / To her redoubled that her undersong, / Which said their bridal day should not be long. / And gentle echo from the neighbour ground / Their accents did resound.