282 ENGLISH BOTANY. 
And where 
The fan’rall trump sounds you are there. 
I shall be made 
Ere long a fleeting shade ; 
Pray come, 
And do some honour to my tomb; 
Do not deny 
My last request, for I 
Will be 
Thankful to you or friends for me.” 
Shakspeare mentions the yew as being used for bows :— 
“The very beadsmen learn to bend their bows 
Of double fatal yew against thy State.” 
He also tells us that in the witches’ cauldron in “Macbeth” one of the ingredients 
was “slips of yew;” and, alluding to its use in funerals, he says, ‘‘ My shroud of 
white stuck all with yew.” 
Gray’s lines in his “ Elegy” are well known :— 
“ Beneath those rugged elms, that yew tree’s shade, 
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, 
Each in his narrow cell securely laid, 
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.” 
Wordsworth gives us a description of the yew which must be quoted :— 
“There is a yew tree, pride of Lorton Vale, 
Which to this day stands single in the midst 
Of its own darkness, as it stood of yore, 
Not loth to furnish weapons in the hands 
Of Umfraville or Percy ere they marched 
To Scotland’s heaths, or those that cross’d the sea 
And drew their sounding bows at Agincourt, 
Perhaps at earlier Cressy or Poictiers, 
Of vast circumference and gloom profound, 
This solitary tree! A living thing, 
Produced too slowly ever to decay ; 
Of form and aspect too magnificent 
To be destroyed. But worthier still of note 
Ave those fraternal four of Borrowdale, 
Joined in one solemn and capacious grove; 
Huge trunks! and each particular trunk a growth 
Of intertwisted fibres, serpentine, 
Upcoiling, and immediately convolved, 
Nor uninformed by phantasy and looks 
That threaten the profane; a pillar’d shade 
Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue 
By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged 
Perennially ; beneath whose sable roof 
Of boughs, as if for festal purpose decked 
With unrejoicing berries, ghostly shapes 
