The Poetry of Flowers. 
106 
Then bear me thence one bough, to shed 
Life's parting sweetness round my head. 
And bind it, mother, on my breast, 
When I am laid in lonely rest. 
TO THE NARCISSUS. 
BY BEN JONSON. 
Arise, and speak thy sorrows, Echo, rise; 
Here, by this fountain, where thy love did pine, 
Whose memory lives fresh to vulgar fame, 
Shrined in this yellow flower, that bears his name, 
ECHO. 
His name revives, and lifts me up from earth ;— 
See, see the mourning fount, whose springs weep yet 
Th’ untimely fate of that too beauteous boy, 
That trophy of self-love, and spoil of nature, 
Who (now transformed into this drooping flower) 
Hangs the repentant head back from the stream ; 
As if it wished—would I had never looked 
In such a flattering mirror ! O, Narcissus ! 
Thou that wast once (and yet art) my Narcissus. 
Had Echo but been private with thy thoughts, 
She would have dropt away herself in tears, 
Till she had all turned waste, that in her 
(As in a true glass) thou might'st have gazed, 
And seen thy beauties by more kind reflection. 
But self-love never yet could look on truth, 
But with bleared beams ; slick flattery and she 
Are twin-born sisters, and do mix their eyes, 
As if you sever one, the other dies. 
Why did the gods give thee a heavenly form, 
And earthly thoughts to make thee proud of it ? 
Why do I ask ? ’Tis now the known disease 
