, kills him. From his blood springs up the
flower which still bears his name.

"Phoebus would have placed thee too, descendant of Amycla,[26] in the
heavens, if the stern Fates had given him time to place thee there.
Still, so far as is possible, thou art immortal; and as oft as the
spring drives away the winter, and the Ram succeeds the watery Fish, so
often dost thou spring up and blossom upon the green turf. Thee, beyond
{all} others, did my father love, and Delphi, situate in the middle[27]
of the earth, was without its guardian {Deity}, while the God was
frequenting the Eurotas, and the unfortified Sparta;[28] and neither his
lyre nor his arrows were {held} in esteem {by him}.

"Unmindful of his own dignity, he did not refuse to carry the nets, or
to hold the dogs, or to go, as his companion, over the ridges of the
rugged mountains; and by lengthened intimacy he augmented his flame. And
now Titan was almost in his mid course between the approaching and the
past night, and was at an equal distance from them both; {when} they
stripped their bodies of their garments, and shone with the juice of the
oily olive, and engaged in the game of the broad quoit.[29] First,
Phoebus tossed it, well poised, into the airy breeze, and clove the
opposite clouds with its weight. After a long pause, the heavy mass fell
on the hard ground, and showed skill united with strength. Immediately
the Taenarian youth,[30] in his thoughtlessness, and urged on by
eagerness for the sport, hastened to take up the circlet; but the hard
ground sent it back into the air with a rebound against thy face,
Hyacinthus.

"Equally as pale as the youth does the Divinity himself turn; and he
bears up thy sinking limbs; and at one moment he cherishes thee, at
another, he stanches thy sad wound; {and} now he stops the fleeting life
by the application of herbs. His skill is of no avail. The wound is
incurable. As if, in a well-watered garden, any one should break down
violets, or poppies, and lilies, as they adhere to their yellow stalks;
drooping, they would suddenly hang down their languid heads, and could
not support themselves; and would look towards the ground with their
tops. So sink his dying features; and, forsaken by its vigour, the neck
is a burden to itself, and reclines upon the shoulder. 'Son of Oebalus,'
says Phoebus, 'thou fallest, deprived of thy early youth; and I look on
thy wound as my own condemnation. Thou art {the object of} my grief, a