NARCISSOS.

———

BY HENRY B. HIRST.

———

There is a flower which haunts the banks of streams,

That blossoms only in the path of Spring,

Lovingly bending where the water gleams.

Its fragrant perfumes fill the azure air,

As, gazing always in the limpid brook,

It seems to watch the Naiades braid their hair,

Or sport, in naked beauty, caroling hymns

Of siren sweetness to poetic Spring,

While gliding, here and there, on milky limbs.

All day it gazes: day by day its eye

Searches the stainless crystal of the stream,

Watching those faultless, fairy forms float by.

Day after day it watches, hour on hour,

Like love above the grave of that it loved —

More like a mortal than a simple flower.

When night descends—when darkness, like the grave’s,

Falls on the stream—when moss and fern and grass

Are lost in gloom—when naught is heard but waves

That roll and ripple through the restless reeds,

It droops its head and sinks in dreamless sleep,

Couched, like a jewel, among worthless weeds.

But sometimes, when the argent moon awakes

The Naiades to midnight mirth and song,

The blossom from its mournful slumber breaks,

And breathes again its sweet, unanswered sighs;

And all the stars that gild the glassy stream

Shine on its heavy gloom like pitying eyes.

Day after day it watches—hour on hour —

Love weeping by the grave of what it loved,

More like a mortal than a simple flower.

And day by day it pales and wanes away

Until it lays its form along the stream,

And slowly sinks to silence and decay.

. . . . . . .

There is a legend told in classic Greece —

A myth, so musical of the olden time,

That none who hears can bid the singer “Peace!”

Pausanius tells it! In its rhythmic flow

We find how fair Narcissos, young in years,

Passionate beyond his age, so long ago

As when the gods came down and walked with men,

Had a sweet sister—would that sister’s name

Had ever have fallen within the poet’s ken —

A young, twin sister, lovely as the light

Of twilight in her own delicious land —

Lovely as Venus was at birth of Night.

Narcissos was as fair, albeit his mould

Had all the attributes that mark his sex;

And men were deities in the Age of Gold.

The sympathies of twin existence ran

So warm in both, their being grew like one,

Though she was feeble woman; he, strong man.

Hand locked in hand, they haunted hill and plain,

Passing in peace their simple innocent lives,

Both singing, so it seemed, the same refrain.

Or angling in the stream, or through the groves

Hunting the deer, they owned one only rule —

One gentle rule, and that was rosy Love’s.

One day—the air was swooning with the heat —

The maiden sought the border of a stream

And stood and laved and cooled her burning feet.

The loving water breathed an amorous tale;

The maiden gave herself to its embrace,

And in its passionate clasp grew deathly pale.

Narcissos was afar: he could not hear

His sister’s piteous murmur of his name:

Alas! that poor Narcissos was not near!

He came at night, and on the river’s shore

Beheld her garments; but her faultless form,

Save in his maniac dreams, he saw no more!

And from that night, and from that hour, he lay,

Swelling the stream with little brooks of tears,

Sighing his soul away day after day.

And gazing in its depths in search of her,

He saw his image, which was so like hers,

He grew to be his own sad worshiper.

The gods, who saw him act this piteous part,

Wept at the sight, and made his pallid form

A snowy blossom with a crimson heart.

There, by the stream, it watches, hour on hour,

Love mourning by the tomb of what it loved,

More like a mortal than a simple flower.