69
Faire daffodills, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early rising sun
Has not attained his noon.
Stay, stay,
Untill the hasting day
Has run
But to the even song;
And, having prayed together, we
Will goe with you along.
We have short time to stay as you,
We have as short a Spring:
As quick a growth to meet decay
As you, or any thing.
We die
As your hours doe, and drie
Away,
Like to the Summer's raine,
Or as the pearles of morning's dew,
Ne'er to be found againe.
The Narcissus is celebrated by many of our old Poets, to whom the story of the beautiful youth growing enamoured of his own reflected form as he gazed into a fountain, and pining in hopeless love till transformed into the Flower bearing his name, was a most tempting subject for their quaint and fanciful muses. The bending heads of all the Narcissi favour the fable, which is certainly a very graceful one; and we do well to bear such in our memory, for they greatly enchance and refine the enjoyment we receive from Flowers, in thus making mental tablets of their delicate and pencilled leaves. The Narcissus is one of the flowers spoken of by Emilia and her maid, in the beautiful garden scene in "The Two Noble Kinsmen," by Beaumont and Fletcher.
