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 (1830–1886)

HERE in this wrecked storm-wasted garden close,

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?

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