257 
THE CYPRESS. 
CUPRESSUS SEMPERVIREN-S. 
Dark tree! still sail when other’s grief is fled, 
The only constant mourner o’er the dead. 
« In nature there is nothing melancholy,” says Cole¬ 
ridge, — an assertion which none can gainsay; yet it is 
an assertion we should have expected from the philo¬ 
sopher rather than the poet; for he whose magic spell 
invests inanimate objects with life and consciousness, 
might surely endow them with feelings, either “ grave or 
gay, lively or severe,” according as his own mind might 
dictate. If in nature there is nothing actually melan¬ 
choly, there are both sounds and sights which appear so, 
and that, even independently of association, though 
doubtless this faculty greatly aids the impression. How 
different, for instance, the plaintive coo of the dove to 
the sprightly trill of the lark; the faded foliage of No¬ 
vember to the vivid burst of vegetation in May: and if 
the mind be so disengaged as to be open to impressions 
from outward tilings, how different the emotions pro- 
s 
