206 SYLVA FLORIFERA. 



sweet-resounding strings, than the elm and 

 other trees sprang up to give him shade. 



" Themselves transplanting, all around they grow, 

 And various shades their various kinds bestow." 



The elm as well as the cypress was a funeral 

 tree with the ancients of the eastern nations, 

 because they considered them as fruitless trees, 

 their seeds being disregarded by them. Homer 

 tells us in the Iliad, that Achilles raised a 

 monument to ^Etion, the father of Andro- 

 mache, around which elms were planted. 



" Stern as he was, he yet rever'd the dead; 

 His radiant arms preserv'd from hostile spoil, 

 And laid him decent on the fun'ral pile; 

 Then rais'd a mountain where his bones were burn'd : 

 The mountain nymphs the rural tomb adorn'd, 

 Jove's sylvan daughters bade their elms bestow 

 A barren shade, and in his honour grow." 



POPE. 



The elm is also celebrated in the Iliad for 

 having formed a hasty bridge, over which 

 Achilles escaped the Xan thus, when that river, 

 by its overflowing, had put him in danger of 

 being carried away.* 



The Greeks called this tree IlreAe*, Ptelea, 

 therefore, from whence the Latins derived 



* See the Iliad, book xxi. This passage, descriptive of 

 the wrath and fury of a river god, is perhaps one of the 

 finest in the whole poem. 



