was one day playing with his pupil at
quoits. Some say that Zephyr (Ovid says it was Boreas) jealous of the
god's influence over young Hyacinthus, wafted the ponderous iron ring
from its right course and caused it to pitch upon the poor boy's head.
He fell to the ground a bleeding corpse. Apollo bade the scarlet
hyacinth spring from the blood and impressed upon its leaves the words
_Ai Ai_, (_alas! alas!_) the Greek funeral lamentation. Milton alludes
to the flower in _Lycidas_,

Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe.

Drummond had before spoken of

That sweet flower that bears
In sanguine spots the tenor of our woes

Hurdis speaks of:

The melancholy Hyacinth, that weeps
All night, and never lifts an eye all day.

Ovid, after giving the old fable of Hyacinthus, tells us that "the time
shall come when a most valiant hero shall add his name to this flower."
"He alludes," says Mr. Riley, "to Ajax, from whose blood when he slew
himself, a similar flower[072] was said to have arisen with the letters
_Ai Ai_ on its leaves, expressive either of grief or denoting the first
two letters of his name [Greek: Aias]."

As poets feigned from Ajax's streaming blood
Arose, with grief inscribed, a mournful flower.

_Young_.

Keats has the following allusion to the old story of Hyacinthus,

Or they might watch the quoit-pitchers, intent
On either side; pitying the sad death
Of Hyacinthus, when the cruel breath
Of Zephyr slew him,--Zephyr penitent,
Who now, ere Phoebus mounts the firmament
Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain.

_Endymion_.

Our English Hyacinth, it is said, is not entitled to its legendary
honors. The words _Non Scriptus_ were applied to this plant by
Dodonaeus, because it had not the _Ai Ai_ upon its petals. Professor
Martyn says that the flower called _Lilium Martagon_ or the _Scarlet
Turk's Cap_ is the plant alluded to by the ancients.

Alphonse Karr, the eloquent French writer, whose "_Tour Round my
Garden_" I recommend to the perusal of all who can sympathize with
reflections and emotions suggested by natural objects, has the following
interesting anecdote illustrative of the force of a floral
association:--

"I had in a solitary corner of my garden _three hyacinths_ which my
father had planted and which death did not allow him to see bloom. Every
year the period of their flowering was for me a solemnity, a funeral and
rel