TO THE NARCISSUS.

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 water, that in her
(As in a truer glass) thou might'st have gaz'd,
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
That Beauty hath, to bear too deep a sense
Of her own self-conceived excellence.

O hadst thou known the worth of heaven's rich gift,
Thou wouldst have turned it to a truer use,
And not (with starved and covetous ignorance)
Pined in continual eyeing that bright gem

The glance whereof to others had been more,
Than to thy famished mind, the wide world's store.

BEN JONSON.

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THE NARCISSUS.

HERE young Narcissus o'er the fountain stood,
And viewed his image in the crystal flood;
The crystal flood reflects his lovely charms,
And the pleased image strives to meet his arms.
No nymph his unexperienced breast subdued,
Echo in vain the flying boy pursued.
Himself alone, the foolish youth admires,
And with fond look the smiling shade desires;
O'er the smooth lake with fruitless tears he grieves;
His spreading fingers shoot in verdant leaves;
Through his pale veins green sap now gently flows,
And in a short lived flow'r his beauty blows.