Rushed gloomy Dis, and seized the trembling maid.”
Shakspeare, in ‘A Winter’s Tale,’ alludes to the same story:—
“O Proserpina,
For the flowers now that, frightened, thou let’st fall,
From Dis’s waggon! Daffodils
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty.”
Other accounts of a similar legend, slightly varied, state that it was at the instigation of Venus that Pluto employed the Narcissus to entice Proserpine to the lower world.——Ancient writers referred to the Narcissus as the flower of deceit, on account of its narcotic properties; for although, as Homer assures us, it delights heaven and earth by its odour and beauty, yet, at the same time, it produces stupor, madness, and even death.——It was consecrated both to Ceres and Proserpine, on which account Sophocles poetically alludes to it as the garland of the great goddesses. “And ever, day by day, the Narcissus, with its beauteous clusters, the ancient coronet of the ‘mighty goddesses,’ bursts into bloom by heaven’s dew” (Œdipus Coloneus).——The Fates wore wreaths of the Narcissus, and the Greeks twined the white stars of the odorous blossoms among the tangled locks of the Eumenides. A crown composed of these flowers was wont to be woven in honour of the infernal gods, and placed upon the heads of the dead.——The Narcissus is essentially the flower of Lent; but when mixed with the Yew, which is symbolical of the Resurrection, it becomes a suitable decoration for Easter:—
“See that there be stores of Lilies,
Called by shepherds Daffodillies.”—Drayton.