Page images
PDF
EPUB

"Now upon Syria's land of roses
Softly the light of eve reposes,

And, like a glory, the broad sun
Hangs over sainted Lebanon ;

Whose head in wintry grandeur towers,
And whitens with eternal sleet,

While summer, in a vale of flowers,

Is sleeping rosy at his feet."

MOORE's Paradise and the Peri.

"Down in a vale where lucid waters strayed

And mountain-cedars stretched their downward shade."

MONTGOMERY.

Moore, in his Lallah Rookh, quotes a passage from Dandini, in which he says that the rivulet of Mount Lebanon is called the Holy River, from the "cedarsaints" among which it rises

"One of that ancient hero line

Along whose glorious current shine
Names that have sanctified their blood;
As Lebanon's small mountain-flood

Is rendered holy by the ranks

Of sainted cedars on its banks !"

But in a note at the end of the volume, the poet tells us a different cause has been assigned for giving this stream the epithet Holy: "In these are deep caverns, which formerly served as so many cells for a great number of recluses, who had chosen these retreats as the only witnesses upon earth of the severity of their penance. The tears of these pious penitents gave the river of which we have just treated the name of the Holy River."(See Chateaubriand's Beauties of Christianity.)

Sir Philip Sidney compares the Cedar to a lady of dignified carriage—

"But to the cedar, Queene of woods, when I lift my be-teared

eyes,

Then do I shape to myselfe that forme which raigns so within

me,

And thinke there she doth dwell, and heare what plaints I do

utter:

When that noble top doth nod, I believe she salutes me; When by the wind it maketh a noyse I doe think she doth answer."

Book 1st.

The passage is too long, to give the whole of it; for the verses of that illustrious man are not the most poetica parts of his writings. In another part of this volume, he alludes to the proverbial straightness of the Cedar : "As sweet as violets, faire as a lilly is, Streight as a cedar

Book 2d.

This passage also has reference to the person of the lady the singer celebrates. Shakespeare makes a similar comparison, in Love's Labour Lost, where Dumain comes in praising his mistress: "the wonder of a mortal eye :" he says she is " as upright as the cedar."

Shakespeare frequently mentions the Cedar : in Henry the Sixth, the 2d part, Warwick says, in answer to Clifford

"This day I'll wear aloft my burgonet

(As on a mountain-top the cedar shews
That keeps its leaves in spite of any storm),
E'en to affright thee with the view thereof."

According to Massinger, however, it is not so tenacious of its roots:

"Cedars, once shaken with a storm, their own

Weight grubs their roots out."

Maid of Honour, Act 3d, Scene 1st.

Fairfax designates the Cedar as proud, in reference, probably, to its erect growth:

"Proud cedar; oak, the king of forests crowned."

Spenser, too, names it, "The cedar proud and tall." Drayton terms it, "The tufted Cedar."

CELASTRUS.

CELASTRINEE.

PENTANDRIA MONOGYNIA.

French, bourreau des arbres; Italian, celastre. It is sometimes familiarly called Staff-tree; being called Celastrus from an evergreen shrub so named by Theophrastus, and described by him as fit for no use but to make staves for old men*.

THE Celastrus bullatus in many parts of North America, where it grows naturally, rises to a height of nine or ten feet, but in this country it seldom exceeds five. Several stems grow from one root, and these again divide into many branches, covered with a brown bark, and clothed with leaves about three inches long, and two broad: the flowers grow in loose spikes at the ends of the branches; they are white, and blow in July. This shrub rarely ripens seed in England.

The Celastrus scandens, or Climbing Staff-tree, has very flexible stalks, which wind round each other, or round any tree or shrub that happens to be near, to the height of fourteen feet, or more; binding the trees to which it clings so tight as sometimes to destroy them. The leaves are of a lively green on the upper surface, but much paler beneath; the flowers make little show, but the fruit is, when ripe, very ornamental, being then of a bright red. It flowers in June, and the seeds ripen in

autumn.

* Johnson, the editor of Gerarde's Herbal, supposes the Celastrus of Theophrastus to have been the evergreen privet, and therefore gives it as one of the names of that shrub.

Thunberg observed a species of the Celastrus in Japan, which for the singular appearance of its winged branches, he named the Celastrus alatus; he describes it as a handsome shrub, and observes, that it is commonly cultivated in the gardens of the Japonese. The young men hang branches of the flowers over the doors of a house, when they would signify their desire to pay addresses to a young woman within*.

* Thunberg's Travels, vol. iii. p. 84.

« PreviousContinue »