In England, it has been customary, since the earliest settlement of that island by the Britons, to plant the Yew in churchyards; and it is therefore as decidedly consecrated to this purpose there, as the Cypress is in the south of Europe. For the decoration of places of burial it is well adapted, from the deep and perpetual verdure of its foliage, which, conjointly with its great longevity, may be considered as emblematical of immortality. The custom still exists, in a few places in Ireland and Wales, of carrying twigs of this and other evergreen trees in funerals, and throwing them into the grave, with the corpse.* (* Encyclopaedia of Plants, 849.) "-----Yet strew Upon my dismall grave Such offerings as ye have, Forsaken Cypresse and Yewe; For kinder flowers can have no birth Or growth from such unhappy earth." STANLY.
There is a mournful yet sweet and pensive pleasure, in thus adorning these last places of repose with such beautiful, unfading memorials of grief. They rob the graveyard or cemetery of its horrors, and by their perpetual garlands of verdure and freshness, inevitably lead the mind from the ideas of death which an ordinary barren churchyard alone inspires, to reflections of a purer and loftier cast; the immortality which awaits the soul when disenthralled of clay. Among the old English poets, we find much of these feelings in favor of decorating the precincts of the grave, and surrounding them with what may be called the poetry of grief. Herrick, one of the sweetest of the number, in some lines addressed to the Cypress and Yew, says: "Bothe of ye have Relation to the grave; And where The funeral trump sounds, you are there. I shall be made Ere longe a fleeting shade; Pray come, And do some honor to my tomb."
