Poet’s Narcissi at the New York Botanical Garden (Bronx, New York)—April 14, 2024. The Garden’s growing multitude of daffodils is now dancing in the spotlight of the strengthening spring sun to the tune of spring’s warm breezes, even as the first daffodils arrived much earlier.

Narcissi have long served as a courageous Messenger of spring that, as Shakespeare observed, “come before the swallow dares.” They have also been described as holding onto their remarkable beauty throughout the duration of their lives. Toward that end, British writer Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote:

And Narcissi, the fairest among them all,
Who gaze on their eyes in the stream’s recess,
Till they die of their own dear loveliness.