116 



SYLVAN SKETCHES. 



Non iunge agli steccati, e sovra ad esso 

 Un' altissima palma i rami estoUe. 

 Or qui fu posto ; e i sacerdoti intanto 

 Quiete all' alma gli pregar col canto." 



Canto iii. st. 72- 



Fairfax's translation of this stanza is rather free : 



Up with the lark the sorrowing Duke arose, 



A mourner- chief at Dudon's burial : 



Of cypress sad a pile his friends compose 



Under a hill o'ergrown with cedars tall : 



Beside the hearse a fruitful palm-tree grows 



(Ennobled since by this great funeral), 



Where Dudon's corpse they softly laid in giound. 



The priests sang hymns, the soldiers wept around.'' 



Statius makes the same use of it *. 

 In the Italian Arcadia, the shepherd says to his 

 friend — 



" Voi userete in me 11 pietoso ufficiO;, 

 E fra cipressi mi farete un tumulo." 



You shall perform for me the last pious office, and shall make 

 me a tomb among cypresses. 



Spenser describes it as emblematical of death ; 



And the sweet cypress, sign of deadly bale." 



Virgil's Gnat. 



Again, in his lamentation for the death of Sir Philip 

 Sidney : 



Instead of girlond, wear sad cypress now. 

 And bitter elder, broken from the bough." 



It is doubtless this tree to which the poet refers in 

 another passage in the same poem : 



" The tree that coffins doth adorn. 

 With stately height threatening the sky." 



* See the Sixth Book, translated by Harte. 



