Poets and their Favourite T7^ees. 1 8 i 



been taken instead of the outdoor seat, what tranquil pleasure remains 

 in the heart from the memory of trees ! 



Forestry and poetry have always been nearly allied. Poets have 

 always loved and often sung of the woodland, and made the sylvan 

 scene — 



" Live in description and look green in song." 



In the olden days, when the angels appeared to Abraham at ]\Iamre 

 their visit sanctified the oak tree under which they sat as the guests of 

 the patriarch, and gave it a glory in the eyes of the wandering Arab 

 which led him to make it a shrine of pilgrimage. It has, though in a 

 less degree, somewhat similar with the poets of our land and the trees 

 in which they delight. Memory lingers round them with pleasure 

 and pilgrimages are not unfrequently made to those places wdiere the 

 poet's favourites are to be seen or even fancied. The Persian poet 

 Hafiz, is buried under a cypress of his own planting, whose leaves 

 give gratification to the Oriental mind, while its branches overshadow 

 the last resting-place of the child of song. A lime tree overhangs 

 the grave of Klopstock, the Milton of Germany ; and in the garden 

 of St. Onifroi's convent, on the Janiculum hill, the oak under which 

 the dying Tasso lay is still shown. 



Chaucer, our morning star of song, dwelt at Woodstock, and whil 

 there, — 



" With a lodge out of the way, 

 Beside a well in the forest," 



composed many of his poems. Another place which has acquired 

 fame from its connection with Chaucer is Donuington Castle, Berk- 

 shire. Evelyn tells us that there was an oak in the park at Donuing- 

 ton which tradition asserted to have been planted by Chaucer, and 

 which was still called Chaucer's oak. The cedars at Wilton, under 

 which Sir Philip Sydney's " Arcadia " was written, are genuine de- 

 scendants from the sacred trees of Lebanon, and may not have been 

 effectless in connecting that iiower of chivalry with those associations 

 of holiness and wisdom which they suggest. The rural village of 

 Hurstwood, near Burnley, in Lancashire, with its fine forest scenery, 

 was the place most probably in which Spenser earliest learnt to chant 

 his lays of love and fairy lore, and felt the force of youthful affection. 

 Everybody has heard of the mulberry tree, which Shakespeare planted 

 before New Place, in Stratford-upon-Avon, under whose branches 

 Drayton and Jonson tasted his gentlemanly hospitality shortly before 

 his early death ; and the tale of its being cut down and manufactureo 

 into innumerable curiosities has excited the ill-feeling of many 

 against the perpetrator of that sacrilegious act of destruction. 



Not to speak of the mulberry trees in the garden of Christ Church 



