Holly. 
227 
“ Below a circling fence its leaves are seen 
Wrinkled and keen; 
No grazing cattle through their prickly round 
Can reach to wound ; 
But as they grow where nothing is to fear, 
Smooth and unarmed the pointless leaves appear. 
“ I love to view these things with curious eyes, 
And moralize; 
And in this wisdom of the holly-tree 
Can emblems see 
Wherewith perchance to make a pleasant rhyme, 
One which may profit in the after-time. 
******* 
“ And as when all the Summer trees are seen 
So bright and green, 
The holly-leaves their fadeless hues display 
Less bright than they; 
But when the bare and wintry woods we see, 
What then so cheerful as the holly-tree ? 
“So serious should my youth appear among 
The thoughtless throng; 
So would I seem among the young and gay 
More grave than they; 
That in my age as cheerful I might be 
As the green winter of the holly-tree.” 
Of tlie various evergreens which the English use at Christ¬ 
mas for decorating their houses and churches, none is such a 
favourite, and is deemed so throughly emblematic of that fes¬ 
tive season, as the much-admired holly. Like all widely-spread 
customs, the practice of decking places with evergreens appears 
to be a relic of considerable antiquity, and one that evidently 
symbolized far more than it does now-a-days. As with so 
many of our emblematic plants, the races of antiquity ascribed 
several wonderful properties to the holly-tree: the disciples of 
Zoroaster, the fire-worshippers, believed that the sun never 
shadowed it; and the followers of that philosopher still re¬ 
maining in Persia and India, are said to throw water impreg¬ 
nated with holly-bark in the face of a new-born child. 
During the great festival of the Saturnalia, which occurred 
about the period of the present Christmas, it was customary 
among the Romans to send holly-boughs to their friends, as 
typical of their good wishes. Pliny states that branches' of 
this tree defend houses from lightning, and men from witch¬ 
craft. The early Roman Christians, despite the interdiction 
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