





























200 MOURNING. 
decease of any person, a branch of cypress was 
placed before the door. It is strictly the “ sor- 
rowing tree,” nor do we ask with Prior, 
Why does the cypress flourish in the shade ? 
For there is scarcely any poet who does not 
write of it in mournful sadness. Spenser 
records it as “the cypress funeral ;’’ and Miss 
Landon observes, 
A funeral train 
Will in a cypress grove be found. 
And again, 
The moon is o’er a grove of cypress trees 
Weeping like mourners. 
And Byron asks, 
Ah! why 
With cypress branches hast thou wreathed thy bowers ? 
Mournful as is the wreath, we find it. bestowed, 
asad memorial, by the hand of friendship, 
O’er ruined shrines and silent tombs, 
The weeping cypress spreads its glooms, 
In immortality of woe, 
Whilst other shrubs in gladness blow, 
And fling upon the passing wind 
Their liberal treasures unconfined. 
And well its dark and drooping leaf, 
May image forth the gloom and grief, 







