406 SYLVAN SKETCHES. 



Remembers he the trees has seen ; 

 He'll talk of them from noon till night, 

 And goes with folks to show the sight. 

 On Sundays, after evening prayer, 

 He gathers all the parish there ; 

 Points out the place of either yew, 

 Here Baucis, there Philemon grew : 

 Till once a parson of our town, 

 To mend his barn, cut Baucis down ; 

 At which 'tis hard to be believed 

 How much the other tree was grieved, 

 Grew scrubbed, died a-top, was stunted ; 

 So the next parson stubbed and burnt it." 



It was rather an extravagance, surely, in the parson to 

 cut down Baucis merely to mend his barn, since the Yew 

 affords a veined wood, very hard and smooth, and valued 

 by turners, inlayers, and cabinet-makers : 



Their beauteous veins the yew 



And phyllerea lend, to surface o'er 

 The cabinet." 



Mr. Gilpin is a great admirer of the Yew tree, and 

 bitterly resents the manner in which it was so frequently 

 shorn and shivered into all sorts of odd forms. " In a 

 state of nature," says he, " except in exposed situations, 

 it is perhaps one of the most beautiful evergreens we 

 have*." 



It is one of the trees mentioned by Virgil as indicating 

 a cold and barren soil. 



Although the Yew is of very slow growth, it is a long 

 liver, and some have accordingly grown to an immense 

 bulk. Several have been recorded as measuring twenty- 



* Gilpin's Forest Scenery. 



