







14 FRIENDSHIP. 
the sap. The author of a French work has 
repelled this calumny. The ivy appears to him 
to be the emblem of eternal friendship; he 
says, ‘* Nothing is able to separate the ivy from 
the tree around which it has once entwined 
itself; it clothes the object with its own foliage 
in that inclement season when its black boughs 
are covered with hoar frost; the companion of 
its destinies, it falls when the tree is cut down. 
Death itself does not detach it, but it continues 
to decorate with its constant verdure the dry 
trunk it had chosen as its support.” Clare 
says, 
The ivy shuns the city wall, 
Where busy clamorous crowds intrude, 
And climbs the desolated hall 
In silent solitude ; 
The time-worn arch, the fallen dome, 
Are roots for its eternal home. 
Carrington makes it the symbol of desolation. 
Alluding to the ruins of Trematon, on the banks 
of Tamar, he sings, 
It is the triumph of resistless time, 
Man and his labours must submit to him ! 
He throws the column from its solid base ! 
He saps e’en now thy withering remains, 
Majestic Trematon ! and till the hour, 
When he, exulting, on the ground shall dash 
