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 transform’d into this drooping flower)
Hangs the repentant head back from the stream;
As if it wish’d—would I had never look’d
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 dropped away herself in tears
Till she had all turn’d waste, that in her
(As in a true glass) thou might’st have gazed,
And seen thy beauties by more kind reflection.
But self-love never yet could look on truth
But with blear’d 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 turn’d 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 famish’d mind the wide world’s store.
Ben Jonson, 1574–1637.