A few observations must still be added on the pleasing, though now nearly obsolete, practice of carrying ever-greens and garlands at funerals, and of decorating the grave with flowers. There is something so strikingly emblematic, so delightfully soothing in these old rites, that though the prototype be probably heathen, their disuse is to be regretted. "The carrying of ivy, or laurel, or rosemary, or some of those ever-greens," says Bourne, "is an emblem of the soul's immortality. It is as much as to say, that though the body be dead, yet the soul is ever-green and always in life: it is not like the body, and those other greens which die and revive again at their proper seasons, no autumn nor winter can make a change in it, but it is unalterably the same, perpetually in life, and never dying.
"The Romans, and other heathens upon this occasion, made use of cypress, which being once cut, will never flourish nor grow any more, as an emblem of their dying for ever, and being no more in life. But instead of that, the antient Christians used the things before mentioned; they laid them under the corps in the grave, to signify, that they who die in Christ, do not cease to live. For though, as to the body they die to the world, yet as to their souls, they live to God.
"And as the carrying of these ever-greens is an emblem of the soul's immortality, so it is also of the resurrection of the body: for as these herbs are not entirely plucked up, but only cut down, and will, at the returning season, revive and spring up again; so the body, like them, is but cut down for a while, and will rise and shoot up again at the resurrection."[239:B]
The bay and rosemary were the plants usually chosen, the former
as being said to revive from the root, when apparently dead, and the latter from its supposed virtue in strengthening the memory:
"There's rosemary, that's for remembrance."[240:A]
Shakspeare has frequently noticed these ever-greens, garlands, and flowers, as forming a part of the tributary rites of the departed, as elegant memorials of the dead: at the funeral of Juliet he adopts the rosemary:—
"Dry up your tears, and stick your rosemary
On this fair corse, and as the custom is,
In all her best array bear her to church."[240:B]