Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Yew (Taxus)
Careless, unsocial plant! that loves to dwell
’Midst skulls and coffins, epitaphs and worms:
Where light-heel’d ghosts and visionary shades,
Beneath the wan, cold Moon (as Fame reports)
Embodied, thick, perform their mystic rounds.
No other merriment, dull tree! is thine.
Blair—The Grave. L. 22.
For there no yew nor cypress spread their gloom
But roses blossom’d by each rustic tomb.
Campbell—Theodric. L. 22.
Slips of yew
Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse.
Macbeth. Act IV. Sc. 1. L. 27.
Of vast circumference and gloom profound,
This solitary Tree! A living thing
Produced too slowly ever to decay;
Of form and aspect too magnificent
To be destroyed.
Wordsworth—Yew-Trees.
There is a Yew-tree, pride of Lorton Vale,
Which to this day stands single, in the midst
Of its own darkness, as it stood of yore.
Wordsworth—Yew-Trees.