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Away, away with thy tempting bloom — 
Go seek thee a fitting bower — 
In the churchyard drear by the haunted tomb. 
Or the falling shrine, make thy cheerless home. 
Thou fair but treacherous flower : 
Or where mandrakes * grow by the wizard’s cave. 
And the adder lurks, let thy garlands wave. 
* In the dark ages, when ignorance and superstition, “ fancy sick,” 
shaped out of the commonest objects of nature “ Gorgons and Hydras, 
and Chimaeras dire,” the mandrake held the foremost rank amongst those 
“ plants of power” which were imagined to possess a mysterious influence 
over the destiny of man. To the singular form of its taper root (which, in 
some plants, descends six or even eight feet underground, and is supposed 
to bear some resemblance to the human figure) it owes both its name and 
its supposed magical properties, which happily were all of a beneficial 
tendency. “ One of the two species,” Calmet says, “ emits a pleasant odour, 
of so powerful an effect as to revive the sinking spirits of the dying, 
affording time for the application of other restoratives.” It is somewhat 
difficult to reconcile this invigorating quality with the somniferous effects 
attributed to it by Shakspeare in the following lines : — 
-“ Not poppy, nor mandragora. 
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, 
Shall ever med’cine thee to that sweet sleep 
Which thou ow’dst yesterday." 
But, notwithstanding the good effects ascribed to it, the mandrake is 
generally found in bad company ; being associated by our poets with 
those plants which Virgil designates « fellest of the weedy race.” Amongst 
such it is classed by Harte, in his description of the flowers which grow 
near the Palace of Death : — 
“ Nor were the nightshades wanting, nor the power 
Of thom’d stramonium, nor the sickly flower 
Of cloying mandrakes, the deceitful root 
Of the monk’s fraudful cowl, and Plinian fruit." 
