The HYACINTH has always been a great favorite with the poets, ancient and modern. Homer mentions the Hyacinth as forming a portion of the materials of the couch of Jove and Juno.
Thick new-born Violets a soft carpet spread,
And clustering Lotos swelled the rising bed,
And sudden Hyacinths[069] the turf bestrow,
And flaming Crocus made the mountains glow
Iliad, Book 14
Milton gives a similar couch to Adam and Eve.
Flowers were the couch
Pansies, and Violets, and Asphodel
And Hyacinth, earth's freshest, softest lap
With the exception of the lotus (so common in Hindustan,) all these flowers, thus celebrated by the greatest of Grecian poets, and represented as fit luxuries for the gods, are at the command of the poorest peasant in England. The common Hyacinth is known to the unlearned as the Harebell, so called from the bell shape of its flowers and from its growing so abundantly in thickets frequented by hares. Shakespeare, as we have seen, calls it the Blue-bell.
The curling flowers of the Hyacinth, have suggested to our poets the idea of clusters of curling tresses of hair.
His fair large front and eye sublime declared
Absolute rule, and hyacinthine locks
Round from his parted forelock manly hung,
Clustering
Milton
The youths whose locks divinely spreading
Like vernal hyacinths in sullen hue