2122 ARBORETUM AND FRUTJCETUM. PART III. 



carried with him a lofty pine tree, by way of walkingstick ; that Ceres bore a 

 flaming pine tree, plucked from Mount Etna, in each hand, during her search 

 for her daughter Proserpine ; and that Cybele, when her favourite Atys was 

 about to destroy himself, changed him into a pine tree, and hence that tree 

 was considered sacred to Cybele. He adds that a grove of sacred pines 

 was among the trees moved by the music of Orpheus. Ovid also gives us 

 the history of Sciron, or Cercyon, the pine-bender, a notorious robber, 

 whose habit was, when he had taken a prisoner, to bend two pine trees, and 

 to tie one of the prisoner's hands to each, and then to let the trees fly back, 

 when the unfortunate traveller was torn asunder. This cruel monster was 

 destroyed by Theseus. Virgil tells us that the ships of ^Eneas, which were 

 afterwards changed into nymphs, were made of pine trees sacred to Cybele. 

 He also alludes to the mournful sounds produced among the pine branches 

 by the wind, and calls them the singing pines : 



" The pines of Masnalus were heard to mourn, 

 And sounds of woe along the groves were borne." 



The cones of the pine were sometimes sacrificed to Bacchus, because they 

 were put into wine to give it a flavour ; and sometimes to Esculapius, because 

 their odour, being balsamic, was thought excellent for asthmas. 



The pine tree is frequently mentioned by the elder British poets, prin- 

 cipally as affording an object of comparison for tall and stately beauty, or for 

 dark and gloomy grandeur. One of the finest allusions to the pine is by 

 Milton, in his splendid description of Satan, in the first book of the Paradise 

 Lost : 



" His spear, to equal which the tallest pine, 

 Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast 

 Of some great ammiral, were but a wand." 



Milton also says : 



" His praise, ye winds, that from four quarters blow, 

 Breathe soft or loud ; and wave your tops, ye pines, 

 With every plant, in sign of worship wave. 



Among the more modern poets, perhaps the most beautiful lines relating 

 to the pine are those of Barry Cornwall. Speaking of Polyphemus, he 

 says, 



".Mighty tears then fill'd 



His solitary eye, and with such noise 



As the rough winds of autumn make when they 



Pass o'er a forest, and bend down the pines, 



The giant sigh'd." Death of Ada. 



" Here dark trees 



Funereal (cypress, yew, and shadowy pine 



And spicy cedar) clustered ; and at night 



Shook from their melancholy branches sounds 



And sighs like death." Ibid. 



Leigh Hunt has also some beautiful lines on the pine tree : 



" And then there fled by me a rush of air 

 That stirred up all the other foliage there, 

 Filling the solitude with panting tongues ; 

 At which the pines woke up into their songs, 

 Shaking their choral locks. 



HUNT'S Foliage: Evergreens, p. 24. 



" And 'midst the flowers, turfd round beneath the shade 

 Of circling pines, a babbling fountain play'd ; 

 And 'twixt the shafts you saw the water bright, 

 Which through the darksome tops glimmer'd with showering light." 



Story of Rimini, canto iii. 



Shelly thus describes one of the conflagrations in the Norway forests : 



" As the Norway woodman quells, 

 In the depth of piny dells, 

 One light flame among the brakes, 

 While the boundless forest shakes, 

 And its mighty trunks are torn 

 By the fire thus lowly born ; 

 The spark beneath his feet is deail ; 

 He starts to see the flame it fed, 

 Howling through the darken'd sky 

 With myriad tongues, victoriously." 



