At the end of the story of Echo and Narcissus, Narcissus dies after falling in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. His Naiad sisters mourn his death and cut their hair to lay on his corpse as a tribute. Echo, who loves Narcissus, laments his loss. However, when his friends attempt to create a funeral pyre for him, they discover that his body is missing. Instead, a beautiful flower, characterized by golden petals surrounded by white, grows in the spot where he was last seen. This flower symbolizes Narcissus and serves as a memorial to his tragic fate.
Echo and Narcissus
Ovid, translated by Brookes More 1 A.D.
But when she saw him in his hapless plight, though angry at his scorn, she only grieved. As often as the love-lore boy complained, “Alas!” “Alas!” her echoing voice returned; and as he struck his hands against his arms, she ever answered with her echoing sounds. And as he gazed upon the mirrored pool he said at last, “Ah, youth beloved in vain!” “In vain, in vain!” the spot returned his words; and when he breathed a sad “farewell!” “Farewell!” sighed Echo too. He laid his wearied head, and rested on the verdant grass; and those bright eyes, which had so loved to gaze, entranced, on their own master's beauty, sad Night closed. And now although among the nether shades his sad sprite roams, he ever loves to gaze on his reflection in the Stygian wave. His Naiad sisters mourned, and having clipped their shining tresses laid them on his corpse: and all the Dryads mourned: and Echo made lament anew. And these would have upraised his funeral pyre, and waved the flaming torch, and made his bier; but as they turned their eyes where he had been, alas he was not there! And in his body's place a sweet flower grew, golden and white, the white around the gold.
Summarize what happens at the end of the story.
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