Amaranth - Myth, Legend and Poetry

Myth, Legend and Poetry

The word amaranth comes from the Greek word amarantos, meaning "unwithering". The word was applied to amaranth because it did not soon fade and so symbolized immortality. "Amarant" is a more correct, albeit archaic form, chiefly used in poetry. The current spelling, amaranth, seems to have come from folk etymology that assumed the final syllable derived from the Greek word anthos ("flower"), common in botanical names.

An early Greek fable ascribed counted among Aesop's Fables compares the rose to the amaranth to illustrate the difference in fleeting and everlasting beauty:

An amaranth planted in a garden near a Rose-Tree, thus addressed it: "What a lovely flower is the Rose, a favorite alike with Gods and with men. I envy you your beauty and your perfume." The Rose replied, "I indeed, dear Amaranth, flourish but for a brief season! If no cruel hand pluck me from my stem, yet I must perish by an early doom. But thou art immortal and dost never fade, but bloomest for ever in renewed youth."

In John Milton's epic Paradise Lost it is given a more fitting neighbour:

Immortal amarant, a flower which once

In paradise, fast by the tree of life,

Began to bloom; but soon for man's offence

To heaven removed, where first it grew, there grows,

And flowers aloft, shading the fount of life,

And where the river of bliss through midst of heaven

Rolls o'er elysian flowers her amber stream:

With these that never fade the spirits elect

Bind their resplendent locks. (III, 353)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in Work Without Hope (1825), also refers to the herb, likely referencing Milton's earlier work. (ll 7-10 excerpted):

Yet well I ken the banks where Amaranths blow,

Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow.

Bloom, O ye Amaranths! bloom for whom ye may,

For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away!

Percy Bysshe Shelley refers to the herb in his poem "Bereavement" (Lines 13-16 excerpted):

Eternity points, in its amaranth bower

Where no clouds of fate o'er the sweet prospect lour,

Unspeakable pleasure, of goodness the dower,

When woe fades away like the mist of the heath.

In his dialogue "Aesop and Rhodopè", published in 1844, Walter Savage Landor wrote:

There are no fields of amaranth on this side of the grave:

there are no voices, O Rhodopè, that are not soon mute, however tuneful:

there is no name, with whatever emphasis of passionate love repeated,

of which the echo is not faint at last.

Joachim du Bellay mentioned the herb in his "A Vow To Heavenly Venus," ca. 1500.

We that with like hearts love, we lovers twain,

New wedded in the village by thy fane,

Lady of all chaste love, to thee it is

We bring these amaranths, these white lilies,

A sign, and sacrifice; may Love, we pray,

Like amaranthine flowers, feel no decay;

Like these cool lilies may our loves remain,

Perfect and pure, and know not any stain;

And be our hearts, from this thy holy hour,

Bound each to each, like flower to wedded flower.

In the fourth book of Endymion, John Keats writes:

The spirit culls

Unfaded amaranth, when wild it strays

Through the old garden-ground of boyish days.

In ancient Greece, the amaranth (also called chrysanthemum and helichrysum) was sacred to Ephesian Artemis. It was supposed to have special healing properties, and, as a symbol of immortality, was used to decorate images of the gods and tombs. In legend, Amarynthus (a form of Amarantus) was a hunter of Artemis and king of Euboea; in a village of Amarynthus, of which he was the eponymous hero, there was a famous temple of Artemis Amarynthia or Amarysia (Strabo x. 448; Pausan. i. 31, p. 5). It was also widely used by the Chinese for its healing chemicals, curing illnesses such as infections, rashes, and migraines. The "Amarantos" is the name of a several-century-old popular Greek folk song:

Look at the amaranth:

on tall mountains it grows,

on the very stones and rocks

and places inaccessible.