* 3 8 
Acacia 
“ Our sands are bare, but down their slope “Come, if the love thou hast for me 
The silvery-footed antelope Is pure and fresh as mine for thee,— 
As gracefully and gaily springs, Fresh as the fountain underground 
As o’er the marble courts of kings. When first’t is by the lapwing found.* 
“ Then come—thy Arab maid will be “ But if for me thou dost forsake 
The loved and lone acacia-tree, Some other maid, and rudely break 
The antelope whose feet shall bless Her worship’d image from its base, 
With their light sound thy loneliness. To give to me the ruin’d place; 
“ Then fly with me,—if thou hast known “Then fare thee well,—I’d rather make 
No other flame, nor falsely thrown My bower upon some icy lake 
A gem away that thou hadst sworn When thawing suns begin to shine, 
Should ever in thy heart be worn. Than trust to love so false as thine. ” 
Thus passionately sung the “ light of the harem,” in “ Lalla 
Rookh.” 
The pseudo-acacia is known also as the robinia, and was thus 
named by Linnaeus in honour of Robin the botanist, who— 
somewhat more than a century ago—introduced the tree into 
France from America. There are two species of this acacia 
cultivated in Europe : their foliage is of a peculiarly brilliant 
green, and their pea-shaped blossoms droop in elegant clusters 
like those of the laburnum. Their beauty, however, is fleeting, 
scarcely lasting for a week, but during their short-lived exist¬ 
ence exhaling a sweet perfume. One of these species bears 
white bloom; but the favourite of the twain bears, as its name 
implies, rose-coloured flowers. 
In a well-known “ Language of Flowers,” this latter tree— 
the rose acacia—is adopted as the type of elegance , because, 
remarks the editor, “the art of the toilet cannot produce any¬ 
thing fresher or more elegant than the attire of this pretty 
shrub. Its drooping branches, its gay green, its beautiful 
bunches of pink flowers, resembling bows of ribbon—all give 
it the appearance of a fashionable female in her ball-dress.” 
In Burger’s Blumensprache , the acacia, as in most native and 
foreign floral languages, stands as the symbol of friendship. 
Under its name of locust-tree, Holmes uses the acacia as a 
symbol of mourning: 
“ When damps beneath and storms above 
Have bowed these fragile towers, 
Still o’er the grave yon locust-grove 
Shall swing its Orient flowers. ” 
* The hudhud , or lapwing, is supposed to have the power of discovering water 
underground. 
