CEDAR TREE. 



85 



Now upon Syria's land of roses 

 Softly the light of eve reposes, 

 And, like a glory, the broad sun 

 Hangs over sainted Lebanon ; 

 Whose head in wintry grandeur towers. 

 And whitens with eternal sleet, 

 WTiile summer, in a vale of flowers. 

 Is sleeping rosy at his feet." 



Moore's Paradise and the Peri. 



" Down in a vale where lucid waters strayed 



And mountain-cedars stretched their downward shade." 



Montgomery. 



Moore, in his Lallah Rookh, quotes a passage from 

 Dandini, in which he says that the rivulet of Mount 

 Lebanon is called the Holy River, from the " cedar- 

 saints'" among which it rises — 



One of that ancient hero line 

 Along whose glorious current shine 

 Names that have sanctified their blood ; 

 As Lebanon's small mountain-flood 

 Is rendered holy by the ranks 

 Of sainted cedars on its banks !" 



But in a note at the end of the volume, the poet tells 

 us a different cause has been assigned for giving this 

 stream the epithet Holy : "In these are deep caverns, 

 which formerly served as so many cells for a great num- 

 ber of recluses, who had chosen these retreats as the only 

 witnesses upon earth of the severity of their penance. 

 The tears of these pious penitents gave the river of which 

 we have just treated the name of the Holy River.^ — 

 {^See CliateauhriandbS Beauties of ChristianitLf.) 



Sir Philip Sidney compares the Cedar to a lady of 

 dignified carriage — 



