The Flos Adonis, a blood-red flower of the Anemone tribe, is one of the
many plants which, according to ancient story sprang from the tears of
Venus and the blood of her coy favorite.
Rose cheeked Adonis hied him to the chase
Hunting he loved, but love he laughed to scorn
_Shakespeare_.
Venus, the Goddess of Beauty, the mother of Love, the Queen of Laughter,
the Mistress of the Graces and the Pleasures, could make no impression
on the heart of the beautiful son of Myrrha, (who was changed into a
myrrh tree,) though the passion-stricken charmer looked and spake with
the lip and eye of the fairest of the immortals. Shakespeare, in his
poem of _Venus and Adonis_, has done justice to her burning eloquence,
and the lustre of her unequalled loveliness. She had most earnestly, and
with all a true lover's care entreated Adonis to avoid the dangers of
the chase, but he slighted all her warnings just as he had slighted her
affections. He was killed by a wild boar. Shakespeare makes Venus thus
lament over the beautiful dead body as it lay on the blood-stained
grass.
Alas, poor world, what treasure hast thou lost!
What face remains alive that's worth the viewing?
Whose tongue is music now? What can'st thou boast
Of things long since, or any thing ensuing?
The flowers are sweet, their colors fresh and trim,
But true sweet beauty lived and died with him.
In her ecstacy of grief she prophecies that henceforth all sorts of
sorrows shall be attendants upon love,--and alas! she was too correct an
oracle.
The course of true love never does run smooth.
Here is Shakespeare's version of the metamorphosis of Adonis into a
flower.
By this the boy that by her side lay killed
Was melted into vapour from her sight,
And in his blood that on the ground lay spilled,
A purple flower sprang up, checquered with white,
Resembling well his pale cheeks, and the blood
Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood.
She bows her head, the new sprung flower to smell,
Comparing it to her Adonis' breath,
And says, within her bosom it shall dwell
Since he himself is reft from her by death;
She crops the stalk, and in the branch appears
Green dropping sap which she compares to tears.
The reader may like to contrast this account of the change from human
into floral beauty with the version of the same story in Ovid as
translated by Eusden.
Then on the blood sweet nectar she bestows,
The scented blood in little bubbles rose;
Little as rainy drops, which fluttering fly,
Borne by the winds, along a lowering sky,
Short time ensued, till where the blood was shed,
A flower began to rear its purple head
Such, as on Punic apples is revealed
Or in the filmy rind but half concealed,
Still here the fate of lonely forms we see,
_So sudden fades the sweet Anemone_.
The feeble stems to stormy blasts a prey
Their sickly beauties droop, and pine away
The winds forbid the flowers to flourish long
Which owe to winds their names in Grecian song.
The concluding couplet alludes to the Grecian name of the flower
([Greek: anemos], _anemos_, the wind.)
It is said of the Anemone that it never opens its lips until Zephyr
kisses them. Sir William Jones alludes to its short-lived beauty.
Youth, like a thin anemone, displays
His silken leaf, and in a morn decays.