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

Collins

Sir William Jones describes—­

    The fragrant hyacinths of Azza’s hair,
    That wanton with the laughing summer air.

A similar allusion may also be found in prose.

“It was the exquisitely fair queen Helen, whose jacinth[070] hair, curled by nature, intercurled by art, like a brook through golden sands, had a rope of fair pearl, which, now hidden by the hair, did, as it were play at fast and loose each with the other, mutually giving and receiving richness.”—­Sir Philip Sidney

“The ringlets so elegantly disposed round the fair countenances of these fair Chiotes [071] are such as Milton describes by ‘hyacinthine locks’ crisped and curled like the blossoms of that flower”

Dallaway

The old fable about Hyacinthus is soon told.  Apollo loved the youth and not only instructed him in literature and the arts, but shared in his pastimes.  The divine teacher 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.