ARBOR DA Y MANUAL. 
339 
THE SACRED CYPRESS TREE. 
I BN BATUTA, the celebrated Mussulman traveler of the fourteenth century, 
speaks of a cypress tree in Ceylon, universally held sacred by the natives, 
the leaves of which were said to fall only at certain intervals, and he who had 
the happiness to find and eat one of them was restored at once to youth and 
vigor. The traveler saw several venerable Joyces, or saints, sitting silent and 
motionless under the tree, patiently awaiting the falling of a leaf. 
Thus does Whittier in verse describe the patient vigil: 
They sat in silent watchfulness 
The sacred cypress trees about, 
And from beneath old wrinkled brows 
Their failing eyes looked out. 
Gray Age and Sickness await there 
Through weary night and lingering day, 
Grim as the idols at their side. 
And motionless as they. 
Unheeded in the boughs above 
The song of Ceylon’s birds was sweet, 
Unseen of them the island flowers 
Bloomed brightly at their feet. 
They waited for that falling leaf 
Of which the wandering Jogees sing 
Which lends once more to wintry age 
The greenness of its spring. 
Whittier. 
PRIMROSE. 
'ELCOME, pale primrose ! starting up between 
vv Dead matted leaves of ash and oak that strew 
The every lawn, the wood, and spinney through, 
’Mid creeping moss and ivy's darker green; 
How much thy presence beautifies the ground ! 
How sweet thy modest unaffected pride 
Glows on the sunny bank and wood’s warm side! 
Clare:. 
Glistened the dire Snake, and into fraud 
Led Eve, our credulous mother, to the Tree 
Of prohibition, root of all our woe. 
Milton. Paradise Lost.. 
