Cypress. 
*93 
It has been observed that no other tree blends so well with 
stone buildings. Byron tells of 
“The cypress saddening by the sacred mosques;” 
and Dallaway describes the Seraglio at Constantinople, as 
encircled with embattled walls, with its domes and kiosques 
clustered in splendid confusion, and intermixed with gigantic 
cypresses, rising in the sea from an elevation which Nature 
seems to have intended for the seat of dominion over the whole 
world. 
Homer and Virgil frequently refer to the wood of this tree 
being used for building purposes ; and they, and many other 
ancient and modern poets, allude to its pyramidal form, but 
none more beautifully than Shelley: 
“Thence to a lonely dwelling, where the shore 
Is shadowed with steep rocks, and cypresses 
Cleave with their dark green cones the silent skies. 
And with their shadows the clear depths below.” 
Kirchmann says that its use amongst the ancients was a 
sign that the house was funesta, or afflicted with death, for 
the reason that slips from it will not grow ; whilst Horace 
observes that of all the trees you plant, none will follow its 
brief master but the hated cypress. Evelyn desires his readers 
not to “ despair of the resurrection of a cypress subverted by 
the wind, for some have redressed themselves ; and one (as 
Tiphilinus mentions) rose the next day, which happening 
about the reign of the Emperor Vespasian, was esteemed a 
happy omen! ” 
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