96 PROSERPINA. 



"With this word you may learn the Virgilian line, that shows 

 the final use of iron or iron-darkened ships : 



" Et ferruginea subvectat corpora cyinba." 



The " subvectat corpora " will serve to remind you of the 

 office of the leafy cymba in carrying the bud ; and make yon 

 thankful that the said leafy vase is not of iron ; and is a ship 

 of Life instead of Death. 



11. Already, not once, nor twice, I have had to use the word 

 ' stem,' of the main round branch from which both stalk and 

 cymba spring. This word you had better keep for all grow- 

 ing, or advancing, shoots of trees, whether from the ground, 

 or from central trunks and branches. I regret that the words 

 multiply on us ; but each that I permit myself to use has its 

 own proper thought or idea to express, as you will presently 

 perceive ; so that true knowledge multiplies with time words. 



12. The ' stem,' you are to say, then, when you mean the ad- 

 vancing shoot, which lengthens annually, while a stalk ends 

 every year in a blossom, and a cymba in a leaf. A stem is es- 

 sentially round,* square, or regularly polygonal ; though, as a 

 cymba may become exceptionally round, a stem may become 

 exceptionally flat, or even mimic the shape of a leaf. Indeed 

 I should have liked to write " a stem is essentially round, and 

 constructively, on occasion, square," but it would have been 

 too grand. The fact is, however, that a stem is really a 

 roundly minded thing, throwing off its branches in circles as 

 a trundled mop throws off drops, though it can always order 

 the branches to fly off in what order it likes, two at a time, 

 opposite to each other ; or three, or five, in a spiral coil ; or 

 one here and one there, on this side and that ; but it is always 

 twisting, in its own inner mind and force ; hence it is espe- 

 cially proper to use the word * stem ' of it o-re/x/xa, a twined 

 wreath ; properly, twined round a staff, or sceptre : therefore, 

 learn at once by heart these lines in the opening Iliad : 



Xpvff((f av^L 



And recollect that a sceptre is properly a staff to lean upon ; 

 that as a crown or diadem is first a binding thing, a 

 * I use ' round' rather than * cylindrical,' for simplicity's sake. 



