IVY TKlBE 



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Foremost to deck the sun-warm'd soil, 

 The arum shows her speckled coil ; 

 Or glossy leaves of Ijlue-bell rose 

 Irai)atieut from their long repose. 

 Trim mercury might there he seen 

 With undevelop'd spikelets green ; 



Or gaily glittering from afar 

 The spangled pilewort's burnish'd star 

 Now, tempted by the warmer glow, 

 The tender starwort dares to blow ; 

 Anemone with pensive bell, 

 And tufts of scented Moschatel ; 

 Veronica, whose eye of blue 

 Mingles with coltsfoot's golden hue ; 

 And daisy,* with expanded ray. 

 Fit emblem of the opening day. 



' The whitethorn branches overhead, 

 Their showers of tiny petals shed ; 

 A second snow, when snows are past, 

 And balmy airs are come at last. 



'Through all the vale, above, around, 

 The skies with merry notes resound ; 

 The wren and robin, roving free, 

 Sing to the sunshine cheerily. 

 No longer hid beneath the thorn, 

 Nor crouching in the lanes forlorn. 



' So spend an hour, and you shall prove 

 That 'tis an easy thing to love, — 

 Love birds, love flowers, love nature gay, 

 Love Him who made the April day." 



2. Ivy (Hddem). 



Common Ivy (ff. helix). — Leaves egg-shaped, or heart-shaped, with 

 from 3 to 5 angular lobes ; umbel simple, erect, downy. Plant perennial. 

 The large masses of green ivy on some of our old walls or lofty trees are 

 among the most picturesque objects of the landscape, and afford continually 

 to the artist and poet some grace of form or colour, or some interesting 

 association. 



There are few of us who cannot recall some ancient church or castle, or 

 mouldering arch, or patriarchal tree, covered more or less with its beautiful 

 verdure ; and many have seen old trunks of ivy which must have been the 

 growth of centuries. Such is the Ivy which grows around an old ash-tree 

 near the ruins of Fountains Abbey, with its trunk three feet two inches in 

 girth ; such is that Ivy which grows against a broken wall of the ancient 

 Richborough Castle, in Kent. Amid these decayed remnants of grandeur 

 the old Ivy is still verdant, and while its aged trunk seems almost imbedded 

 in the masonry, its branches spread far and wide, and with their bright 

 though dark-green canopy shelter the song-birds, which sing as gladly now 

 as they did in the time of that old castle's pride. Of many an ancient 

 abbey we may say, in the words of Robert Nicholls : 



" The Ivy clings about the ruin'd walls 

 Of cell and chapel, and refectory ; 

 An oak-tree's shadow, cloud-like, ever falls 

 Upon the spot where stood the altar high ; 

 The chambers all are open to the sky ; 

 A goat is feeding where the praying knelt ; 



The daisy rears its ever open eye 

 Where the proud Abbot in his grandeur dwelt : 

 These signs of Time and Change the hardest heart might melt." 



It is likely that the Ivy often, by its shelter, and by the strong frame- 

 work of its branches, supports the ancient edifice, and prevents its entire 

 destruction. To it we doubtless owe all that now remains of those strong 

 walls reared by our forefathers in their fortresses and monastic institutions. 

 Both Mr. Loudon and Dr. Lindley considered that its growth by the side of 

 a well-built house is rather beneficial than otherwise, as it keeps the walls 

 dry. "Ivy," said the latter writer, "may render a house damp by retaining 



* Day's eye. 



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