46 THE YEW 



so unerringly the character of living nature, failed at 

 first to discern much in this tree besides its gloom. 



' Old yew, which graspest at the stones, 

 That name the underlying dead, 

 Thy fibres net the dreamless head, 

 Thy roots are wrapt about the bones. 



Oh, not for thee the glow, the bloom, 



Who changest not in any gale ! 



Nor branding summer suns avail 

 To touch thy thousand years of gloom .' 



Before addressing the same aged tree a few years 

 later, the bard had recognised that the stir of spring 

 affected it as profoundly as any herb of field or garden. 



' Old warder of these buried bones, 



And answering now my random stroke 

 With fruitful cloud and living smoke, 

 Dark yew, that graspest at these stones, 

 And dippest toward the dreamless head, 

 To thee, too, comes the golden hour 

 When flower is feeling after flower.' 



He repeated the picture, later still, in the Holy 

 Grail, as if the movement among the sombre, silent 

 yews impressed him more powerfully with the im- 

 periousness of spring than all the violets and primroses 

 of lesser bards. 



' Beneath a world-old yew-tree, darkening half 

 The cloister on a gustful April morn, 

 That puflfd the swaying branches into smoke.' 



After all, I am wrong in accusing the other poets of 

 being blind to all qualities in yew save its melancholy. 

 Sir Thomas Browne was so carried away by his 



