FLORA’S LEXICON.
27
RBOR VITÆ, or TREE OF LIFE. Thuja. Class 21, Monœcia. Order: Monadelphia. Thuja, the name of a tree, whose very durable wood served, according to Theophrastus, to make images. Its roots, in particular, being curiously twisted or veined, were used for the most valuable ornamental works. This plant was probably the Juniperus Oxycedrus, very common throughout Greece and the Archipelago, of which it is supposed on good authority that the most ancient statues were made. Our present genus of Thuja has nothing in common with this classical plant, except being an aromatic evergreen tree of the same order, with very durable wood; but it is not a native of Greece or the Levant.
LIVE FOR ME.
“Hafed, my own beloved lord,”
She kneeling cries—* first, last adored!
If in that soul thou’st ever felt
Half what thy lips impassion’d swore,
Here, on my knees, that never knelt
To any but their God before,
I pray thee, as thou lovest me, fly,
Now, now—ere yet their blades are nigh.
Oh haste—the bark that bore me hither
Can waft us o’er yon darkening shore,
East—west—alas, I care not whither,
So thou art safe and I with thee!
Go where ye will, this hand in thine,
Those eyes before me smiling thus,
Through good and ill, through storm and shine,
The world’s a world of love for us!
On some calm, blessed shore we’ll dwell,
Where ’tis no crime to love too well.”
She kneeling cries—* first, last adored!
If in that soul thou’st ever felt
Half what thy lips impassion’d swore,
Here, on my knees, that never knelt
To any but their God before,
I pray thee, as thou lovest me, fly,
Now, now—ere yet their blades are nigh.
Oh haste—the bark that bore me hither
Can waft us o’er yon darkening shore,
East—west—alas, I care not whither,
So thou art safe and I with thee!
Go where ye will, this hand in thine,
Those eyes before me smiling thus,
Through good and ill, through storm and shine,
The world’s a world of love for us!
On some calm, blessed shore we’ll dwell,
Where ’tis no crime to love too well.”
Moore.
