So long as the taste prevailed for metamorphosing the Yew into obelisks, pyramids, birds, and beasts, it was very commonly planted near houses. Now it is nearly banished from the precincts of our residences and pleasure-grounds; not, it would appear, from any real objection that can be urged either against its form or the effect it produces, but from now considering it as a funereal tree, and associating it with scenes of melancholy and the grave, a feeling doubtless arising from many of our most venerable and celebrated specimens growing in ancient church-yards. The origin of these locations is now considered to have arisen from churches having been erected on the sites of Druidical places of worship in Yew groves, or near old Yew-trees. Hence the planting of Yews in church-yards is a custom of heathen origin, which was ingrafted on Christianity on its introduction into Britain.

The sepulchral character of the Yew is thus referred to by Sir Walter Scott, in Rokeby:—

But here 'twixt rock and river grew
A dismal grove of sable Yew.
With whose sad tints were mingled seen
The blighted fir's sepulchral green.
Seemed that the trees their shadows cast,
The earth that nourished them to blast;
For never knew that swathy grove
The verdant hue that fairies love,
Nor wilding green, nor woodland flower,
Arose within its baleful bower.
The dank and sable earth receives
Its only carpet from the leaves,
That, from the withering branches cast,
Bestrewed the ground with every blast.

And Kirke White, in a fragment written in Wilford church-yard, near Nottingham, on occasion of his recovering from sickness, thus introduces it:—

Here would I wish to sleep.—This is the spot
Which I have long marked out to lay my bones in;
Tired out and wearied with the riotous world,
Beneath this Yew I would be sepulchred.

While in that beautiful and pathetic Elegy of Gray's, which is familiar to every mind in Britain, we read:—

Beneath—————that Yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

Poor Carrington has the following lines on the Yew-tree, in a poem entitled My Native Village. The author is buried in the little quiet church-yard of Combehay, a sequestered village at a short distance from Bath. It is situated in a deep and unfrequented valley, where some of the finest and most luxuriant scenery in the west of England may be found. It was chosen, his son tells us, because it is a spot which, when living, he would have loved full well:—

Tree of the days of old—time-honour'd Yew!
Pride of my boyhood—manhood—age, Adieu!
Broad was thy shadow, mighty one, but now
Sits desolation on thy leafless bough!
That huge and far-fam'd trunk, scoop'd out by age,
Will break, full soon, beneath the tempest's rage:
Few are the leaves lone sprinkled o'er thy breast,
There's bleakness, blackness on thy shiver'd crest!
When Spring shall vivify again the earth,
And yon blest vale shall ring with woodland mirth,
Morning, noon, eve,—no bird with wanton glee
Shall pour anew his poetry from thee;
For thou hast lost thy greenness, and he loves
The verdure and companionship of groves—
Sings where the song is loudest, and the spray,
Fresh, fair, and youthful, dances in the ray!
Nor shall returning Spring, o'er storms and strife
Victorious, e'er recal thee into life!
Yet stand thou there—majestic to the last,
And stoop with grandeur to the conquering blast.
Aye, stand thou there—for great in thy decay,
Thou wondrous remnant of a far-gone day,
Thy name, thy might, shall wake in rural song,
Bless'd by the old—respected by the young;
While all unknown, uncar'd for,—oak on oak
Of yon tall grove shall feel the woodman's stroke;
One common, early fate awaits them all,
No sympathizing eye shall mark their fall;
And beautiful in ruin as they lie,
For them shall not be heard one rustic sigh!

Since the use of the bow has been superseded by more deadly instruments of warfare, the cultivation of the Yew is now less common. This, says Evelyn, is to be deplored; for the barrenest ground and coldest of our mountains might be profitably replenished with them. However, in winter, we may still see some of the higher hills in Surrey clad with entire woods of Yew and cypress, for miles around, as we stand on Box Hill; and might, without any violence to the ordinary powers of imagination, fancy ourselves transported into a new or enchanted country. Indeed, Evelyn remarked, in his day, that if in any spot in England,