T 76 Yew- Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



It has been supposed by some that Tennyson in 

 this stanza implies that the yew does not flower, 

 and that his later alteration in the eleventh edition 

 is a confession of his error ; but it is inconceivable 

 that so minute an observer, who in another place 

 speaks of the fruit, can have been so ignorant as to 

 suppose that the tree does not flower. He evi- 

 dently intended that it had not conspicuous and 

 brilliant flowers. ' O, not for thee the glow, the 

 bloom ' ; but he never could have meant to say that 

 it had no flowers. 



In the later edition, he makes a change from 

 ' the thousand years of gloom/ and points out that 

 even the yew has its ' golden hour,' which had been 

 lacking to the subject of the poem : 



' And answering now my random stroke 

 With fruitful cloud and living smoke.' 



' To thee too comes the golden hour 

 When flower \& feeling after flower.' 



The difficulty which has beset the general reader 

 is in great measure caused by overlooking the 

 dioecious habit of the tree ; the pollen being on one 

 tree and the berry on the other. But it is highly 

 improbable that Tennyson made the same over- 

 sight ; and it is even clear that he did not, for in 

 Stanza xxix. he says : 



1 Old sisters of a day gone by, 



Gray nurses loving nothing new ; 

 Why should they miss their yearly due 

 Before their time? They too must die.' 



