Abderahman, the first king of Moorish Spain, is said to have been the first who transplanted the palm from the East into Spain. He is represented as frequently addressing it with great feeling, connecting it with recollections of his native land, whence he had been driven by the usurper of his rightful throne.
Beautiful palm! though strange and rude
The gales that breathe around thee here,
Though in ungenial solitude
There bloom no kindred foliage near—
Yet lovely tree, no foreign hand
Shall rear thee in the stranger’s land.
My fellow exile!—dost thou sigh
For thy lost native soil again—
For the warm rays of Syria’s sky,