The beautiful youth Narcissus, contemplating himself in a
streamlet, became enamoured of his own face; and pining away, was
converted into the flower narcissus. This accounts for the lines, 'To
Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear, nor to himself Narcissus.' But, when
we come to the sequence, 'as to both thou, Adonais.' we have to do, no
longer with the youths Hyacinthus and Narcissus, but with the flowers
hyacinth and narcissus: it is the flowers which (according to Shelley)
loved Adonais better than the youths were loved, the one by Phoebus and
the other by himself. These flowers--being some of the kindling buds
which Spring had thrown down--stand 'wan and sere.' (This last point is
rather the reverse of a phrase in Bion's Elegy, p. 64, 'The flowers
flush red for anguish.') It may perhaps be held that the transition from
the youths to the flowers, and from the emotions of Phoebus and of
Narcissus to those assigned to the flowers, is not very happily managed
by Shelley: it is artificial, and not free from confusion. As to the
hyacinth, the reader will readily perceive that a flower which bears
markings read off into [Greek: ai ai] (or [Greek: AI AI] seems more
correct) cannot be the same which we now call hyacinth.
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