240 LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



this purpose there, as the Cypress is in the south of Europe. 

 For the decoration of places of burial it is well adapted, from 

 the deep and perpetual verdure of its foliage, which con- 

 jointly with its great longevity, may be considered as em- 

 blematical of immortality. The custom still exists, in a few 

 places in Ireland and Wales, of carrying twigs of this and 

 other evergreen trees in funerals, and throwing them into the 

 grave, with the corpse.* 



" Yet strew 



Upon my dismall grave 

 Such offerings as ye have, 

 Forsaken Cypresse and Yeice; 

 For kinder flowers can have no birth 

 Or growth from such unhappy earth." 



Stanly. 



There is a mournful yet sweet and pensive pleasure, in thus 

 adorning these last places of repose with such beautiful, unfad- 

 ing memorials of grief. They rob the graveyard or cemetery 

 of its horrors, and by their perpetual garlands of verdure 

 and freshness, inevitably lead the mind from the ideas of 

 death which an ordinary barren churchyard alone inspires, 

 to reflections of a purer and loftier cast ; the immortality 

 which awaits the soul when disenthralled of clay. Among 

 the old English poets, we find much of these feelings in fa- 

 vour of decorating the precincts of the grave, and surround- 

 ing them with what may be called the poetry of grief. Her- 

 rick, one of the sweetest of the number, in some lines ad- 

 dressed to the Cypress and Yew, says : 



" Bothe of ye have 

 Relation to the grave ; 

 And where 

 The funeral trump sounds, you are there. 



* 



* Encyclopaedia of Plants, 849, 



