TREES IN NATURE 105 



I have quoted the stanza in full, because the 

 last two lines are descriptive of the yew, as 

 well as the first two verses. The new season's 

 leaves are a lighter green, and grow dark later 

 on. *'The fruitful cloud and living smoke " is 

 the pollen, which the poet's random stroke 

 shakes from the male flowers, and some of 

 which will settle on the female flowers — usually 

 on a separate tree — and fertilise them. Thus, 

 early in the year, in February and March, in 

 the yew-trees, "flower is feeling after flower". 

 But these incidents of the life of the tree, so 

 important to the tree itself, produce but little 

 effect on its general appearance, which is one 

 of changeless, solemn gloom. The yew apos- 

 trophised by Tennyson is in a churchyard, 

 where the branches seem to grasp at the head- 

 stones, and the roots are wrapped about the 

 bones beneath the soil. Again the description 

 is closely accurate. What reader is not familiar 

 with many a churchyard yew? One after 

 another, as I pause for a moment from writing, 

 they come to my mind. Is it only because its 

 sombre green was thought appropriate to the 

 place that it has so often been planted among 

 the graves? The very reverse of this has 



