BRITISH EVERGREENS. 107 



is represented as crowned with it, and it was often twined with the laurel 

 and the vine, in the poets' wreath. JVIilton speaks of "the Ivy crowned Bacchus," 

 And Pliny informs us that it was the yellow fruited which was consecrated 

 to the god of wine, and also destined to crown the poets. When Bacchus 

 was seized by the pirates, his presence was made manifest by many wondrous 

 changes that took place in different parts of the vessel, which Leigh Hunt 

 thus translates from Homer — 



"For first a fountain of sweet smelling wine 

 Came gushing o'er the deck with sprightly shine, 

 And odours not of earth, their senses took; 

 The pallid wonder spread from look to look: 

 And then a vine tree overran the sail. 

 Its green arms tossing to the pranksome gale 

 And then an Ivy, with a flowering shoot, 

 Ran up the mast in rings, and kissed the fruit, 

 Which here and there the dripping vine let down: 

 On every oar there was a garland crown." 



Homer also describes his heroes as drinking out of a cup made of Ivy 

 wood. The beechen-cup of Alcimedon had a lid of Ivy carved with grapes — 



"The lids are Ivy; grapes in clusters lurk 

 Beneath the carving of the curious work." 



Dryden's Virgil. 



It is related that when Alexander's army, after their conquest of Babylon, 



arrived at the mountain of Nyssa, the reputed birth-place of Bacchus, and 



found it covered with Laurel and Ivy, they were so delighted that they 



tore up the Ivy by its roots, and, twining it round their heads, burst forth 



into hymns to Bacchus, and prayers for their native country. The Greek 



priests presented wreaths of Ivy to newly-married persons, as a symbol of 



the closeness of the tie which bound them, as man and wife, together. 



Ptolemy Philopater, king of Egypt, ordered all the Jews who had abjured 



their religion to be branded with an Ivy leaf. The Ivy has always been 



considered symbolical of friendship, from the closeness of its adherence to 



the tree or ruin on which it has fixed itself. "Nothing," says St. Pierre, 



"can separate it from the tree which it has once embraced; it clothes it with 



lits own leaves in that inclement season when its dark boughs are covered 



Iwith hoar-frost. The faithful companion of its destiny, it falls when the tree 



[is cut down; death itself does not relax its grasp, and it continues to adorn 



[with its verdure the dry trunk that once supported it." 



"When the oak denies her stay, 



The creeping Ivy winds her humble way; 



No more she twists her branches round, 



But drags her feeble stem along the barren ground." 



Lloyd. 



Spenser gives the following delightful picture of its embraces: — 



