Oh! how could fancy crown with thee,
In ancient days, the god of wine,
And bid thee at the banquet be,
Companion of the vine?
Thy home, wild plant, is where each sound
Of revelry hath long been o'er;
Where song's full notes once peal'd around,
But now are heard no more.
The Roman, on his battle plains,
Where kings before his eagles bent,
Entwined thee, with exulting strains,
Around the victor's tent;
Yet there, though fresh in glossy green,
Triumphantly thy boughs might wave—
Better thou lov'st the silent scene
Around the victor's grave.
Where sleep the sons of ages flown,
The bards and heroes of the past,
Where through the halls of glory gone,
Murmurs the wintry blast;
Where years are hastening to efface
Each record of the grand and fair—
Thou, in thy solitary grace,
Wreath of the tomb! art there.
Oh! many a temple, once sublime
Beneath a blue Italian sky,
Hath nought of beauty left by time,
Save thy wild tapestry.
And, reared 'midst crags and clouds, 'tis thine
To wave where banners waved of yore,
O'er towers that crest the noble Rhine,
Along his rocky shore.
High from the fields of air look down
Those eyries of a vanished race,
Homes of the mighty, whose renown
Hath passed and left no trace.
But thou art there—thy foliage bright,
Unchanged, the mountain storm can brave—
Thou that wilt climb the loftiest height,
And deck the humblest grave.
The breathing forms of Parian stone,
That rise round grandeur's marble halls;
The vivid hues by painting thrown
Rich o'er the glowing walls;
Th' acanthus on Corinthian fanes,
In sculptured beauty waving fair—
These perished all—and what remains?
—Thou, thou alone art there.
'Tis still the same—where'er we tread,
The wrecks of human power we see,
The marvel of all ages fled,
Left to decay and thee.
And still let man his fabrics rear,
August in beauty, grace, and strength,—
Days pass, thou 'Ivy never sere,'[6]
And all is thine at length.
There was a strange old belief that Ivy leaves worn as a garland prevented intoxication, that wine was less exciting when drunk from a cup of its wood, and that these cups had finally the singular property of separating water from wine by filtration, when the two were mingled—or, as it is expressed by Mizaldus Monlucianus in his delightfully absurd 'Centuries,'[7] 'a cup of Ivy, called cissybius, is especially fitted for two reasons, for feasts: firstly, because Ivy is said to banish drunkenness; and secondly, because by it the frauds of tavern keepers, who mix wine with water, are detected.' It is worth remarking, in connection with this, that, according to Loudon(Arboretum et Fruticetum Brittanicum, c. 59), the wood of the Ivy is, when newly cut, really useful as a filter, though it is highly improbable that anything like a complete analysis of mingled water and wine can be effected by it.
It may interest the literary critic, should he be ignorant of the fact, to know that the golden-berried Ivy—worn by Apollo ere he adopted the Daphnean laurel—is the plant consecrated to his calling. Witness Pope:
'Immortal Vida, on whose honored brow
The poet's bays and critic's Ivy grow.'
Perhaps it is given to the critics to remind them that they should be kindly sheltering and warmly protecting to poor poets and others, who may be greatly cheered by a little kindness. For there is an old legend that the Druids decorated dwelling places with Ivy and holly during the winter, 'that the sylvan spirits might repair to them, and remain unnipped with frost and cold winds, until a milder season had renewed the foliage of their darling abodes. (Dr. Chandler, Travels in Greece.) Think of this when ye ink your pens for the onslaught!
It is worth noting that in two or three 'Dream Books' the Ivy is set down as indicating 'long-continued health, and new friendships'—an explanation quite in keeping with its ancient symbolism, and still more with its most literal and apparent meaning of attachment. This latter sense has given poet and artist many a fine figure and image. 'Nothing,' says St. Pierre in his Studies of Nature, 'can separate the Ivy from the tree which it has once embraced: it clothes it with its own leaves in that inclement season when its dark boughs are covered with hoar frost. The faithful companion of its destiny, it falls when the tree is cut down: death itself does not relax its grasp; and it continues to adorn with its verdure the dry trunk that once supported it.'
And of the golden-berried Ivy, Spenser sings:
'Emongst the rest, the clamb'ring Ivy grew,
Knitting his wanton arms with grasping hold,
Lest that the poplar happely should rew
Her brother's strokes, whose boughs she doth enfold
With her lythe twigs, till they the top survew
And paint with pallid green her buds of gold.'
Madame De Genlis tells us of a true-hearted friend, who clung to a fallen minister of state, through good and ill fortune, and followed him into exile, that he adopted for a 'device' a fallen oak tree thickly wound with Ivy, and with the motto: 'His fall cannot free me from him.' An 'emblem' of the later middle age expresses undying conjugal love in a like manner, by a fallen tree wound around with Ivy, beneath which, is the inscription in Spanish: 'Se no la vida porque la muerte.' (Radowitz, Gesammelte Schriften.) A not uncommon seal gives us the Ivy with the motto; 'I die where I attach myself;' while yet another of the ivied fallen trees declares that 'Even ruin cannot separate us.'
Ivy is the badge of the clan Gordon, and of all who bear that name. In conclusion, lest my readers should object that the subject, though eminently suggestive, has been treated entirely without a jest, I will cite a quaint repartee, shockingly destructive of the sentiment just cited: