Holly. 
227 
^ e ^°^r a - C ^ rc ^ n S f ence i ts leaves are seen 
Wrinkled and keen; 
, No £ razln k r 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. 
“ 1 love to vi ew 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 seiious 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 the various evergreens which the English use at Christ¬ 
mas for decorating their houses and churches, none is such a 
avounte, 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^ppears 
° 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 
Z^tCT° n the fi pr ° P T tieS t0 tPe , holl y- tr ee: the disciples of 
tPe fir e-worshippers, believed that the sun never 
hadowed it; and the followers of that philosopher still re- 
aming in I ersia and India, are said to throw water impreg¬ 
nated with holly-bark in the face of a new-born child. ? g 
urmg 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 
typca 1 of their good wishes. Pliny states that branches of 
craft trC Tll efen 1 p USeS fr °™ fightning, and men from witch 
raft. The early Roman Christians, despite the interdiction 
15—2 
