Clytie was a water-nymph and in love with Apollo, who made her no return. So she pined away, sitting all day long upon the cold ground, with her unbound tresses streaming over her shoulders. Nine days she sat and tasted neither food nor drink, her own tears and the chilly dew her only food. She gazed on the sun when he rose, and as he passed through his daily course to his setting; she saw no other object, her face turned constantly on him. At last, they say, her limbs rooted in the ground, her face became a flower[13] which turns on its stem so as always to face the sun throughout its daily course; for it retains to that extent the feeling of the nymph from whom it sprang. Hood, in his “Flowers,” thus alludes to Clytie: “I will not have the mad Clytie, Whose head is turned by the sun; The tulip is a courtly quean, Whom therefore I will shun; The cowslip is a country wench, The violet is a nun;— But I will woo the dainty rose, The queen of every one.” The sunflower is a favorite emblem of constancy. Thus Moore uses it: “The heart that has truly loved never forgets, But as truly loves on to the close; As the sunflower turns on her god when he sets The same look that she turned when he rose.” HERO AND LEANDER Leander was a youth of Abydos, a town of the Asian side of the strait which separates Asia and Europe. On the opposite shore, in the town of Sestos, lived the maiden Hero, a priestess of Venus. Leander loved her, and used to swim the strait nightly to enjoy the company of his mistress, guided by a torch which she reared upon the tower for the purpose. But one night a tempest arose and the sea was rough; his strength failed, and he was drowned. The waves bore his body to the European shore, where Hero became aware of his death, and in her despair cast herself down from the tower into the sea and perished. The following sonnet is by Keats: “ON A PICTURE OF LEANDER “Come hither all sweet maidens soberly, Down looking aye, and with a chasten’d light Hid in the fringes of your eyelids white, And meekly let your fair hands joined be. As if so gentle that ye could not see, Untouch’d, a victim of your beauty bright, Sinking away to his young spirit’s night, Sinking bewilder’d ’mid the dreary sea. ’Tis young Leander toiling to his death. Nigh swooning he doth purse his weary lips For Hero’s cheek, and smiles against her smile. O horrid dream! see how his body dips Dead-heavy; arms and shoulders gleam awhile; He’s gone; up bubbles all his amorous breath!” The story of Leander’s swimming the Hellespont was looked upon as fabulous, and the feat considered impossible, till Lord Byron proved its possibility by performing it himself. In the “Bride of Abydos” he says, “These limbs that buoyant wave hath borne.”