those locks curled like the locks of Bacchus or Apollo, the rounded cheeks, the ivory neck, the parted lips, and the glow of health and exercise over all.  He fell in love with himself.  He brought his lips near to take a kiss; he plunged his arms in to embrace the beloved object.  It fled at the touch, but returned again after a moment and renewed the fascination.  He could not tear himself away; he lost all thought of food or rest, while he hovered over the brink of the fountain gazing upon his own image.  He talked with the supposed spirit:  “Why, beautiful being, do you shun me?  Surely my face is not one to repel you.  The nymphs love me, and you yourself look not indifferent upon me.  When I stretch forth my arms you do the same; and you smile upon me and answer my beckonings with the like.”  His tears fell into the water and disturbed the image.  As he saw it depart, he exclaimed, “Stay, I entreat you!  Let me at least gaze upon you, if I may not touch you.”  With this, and much more of the same kind, he cherished the flame that consumed him, so that by degrees he lost his color, his vigor, and the beauty which formerly had so charmed the nymph Echo.  She kept near him, however, and when he exclaimed, “Alas! alas!” she answered him with the same words.  He pined away and died; and when his shade passed the Stygian river, it leaned over the boat to catch a look of itself in the waters.  The nymphs mourned for him, especially the water-nymphs; and when they smote their breasts Echo smote hers also.  They prepared a funeral pile and would have burned the body, but it was nowhere to be found; but in its place a flower, purple within, and surrounded with white leaves, which bears the name and preserves the memory of Narcissus.

Milton alludes to the story of Echo and Narcissus in the Lady’s song in “Comus.”  She is seeking her brothers in the forest, and sings to attract their attention: 

“Sweet Echo, sweetest nymph, that liv’st unseen
Within thy aery shell
By slow Meander’s margent green,
And in the violet-embroidered vale,
Where the love-lorn nightingale
Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well;
Canst thou not tell me of a gentle pair
That likest thy Narcissus are? 
O, if thou have
Hid them in some flowery cave,
Tell me but where,
Sweet queen of parly, daughter of the sphere,
So may’st thou be translated to the skies,
And give resounding grace to all heaven’s harmonies.”

Milton has imitated the story of Narcissus in the account which he makes Eve give of the first sight of herself reflected in the fountain: 

“That day I oft remember when from sleep
I first awaked, and found myself reposed
Under a shade on flowers, much wondering where
And what I was, whence thither brought, and how. 
Not distant far from thence a murmuring sound
Of waters issued from a cave, and spread
Into a liquid plain, then stood unmoved