C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
The Hyacinth
By Paul Hamilton Hayne (18301886)
H
The grave of infinite generations fled
Of flowers that now lie lustreless and dead
As the gray dust of Eden’s earliest rose,
What bloom is this, whose classical beauty glows
Radiantly chaste, with the mild splendor shed
Round a Greek virgin’s poised and perfect head,
By Phidias wrought ’twixt rapture and repose?
Mark the sweet lines whose matchless ovals curl
Above the fragile stem’s half-shrinking grace,
And say if this pure hyacinth doth not seem
(Touched by enchantments of an antique dream)
A flower no more, but the low drooping face
Of some love-laden, fair Athenian girl?