a bed upon the decayed trunk and grew to no inconsiderable height, forming, as it were, a part of the hedgerow.  In no part of England, or of Europe, have I ever seen a yew-tree at all approaching this in magnitude, as it must have stood.  By the bye, Hutton, the old guide, of Keswick, had been so impressed with the remains of this tree, that he used gravely to tell strangers that there could be no doubt of its having been in existence before the flood.—­I.F.]

One of the “Poems of the Imagination.”—­Ed.

  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: 
  Not loth to furnish weapons for the bands
  Of Umfraville or Percy ere they marched 5
  To Scotland’s heaths; or those that crossed the sea
  And drew their sounding bows at Azincour,
  Perhaps at earlier Crecy, or Poictiers. 
  Of vast circumference and gloom profound
  This solitary Tree! a living thing 10
  Produced too slowly ever to decay;
  Of form and aspect too magnificent
  To be destroyed.  But worthier still of note
  Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale,
  Joined in one solemn and capacious grove; 15
  Huge trunks! and each particular trunk a growth
  Of intertwisted fibres serpentine
  Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved;
  Nor uninformed with Phantasy, and looks
  That threaten the profane;—­a pillared shade, 20
  Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue,
  By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged
  Perennially—­beneath whose sable roof
  Of boughs, as if for festal purpose, decked
  With unrejoicing berries—­ghostly Shapes 25
  May meet at noontide; Fear and trembling Hope,
  Silence and Foresight; Death the Skeleton
  And Time the Shadow;—­there to celebrate,
  As in a natural temple scattered o’er
  With altars undisturbed of mossy stone, 30
  United worship; or in mute repose
  To lie, and listen to the mountain flood
  Murmuring from Glaramara’s inmost caves.

The text of this poem was never altered.  The Lorton Yew-tree—­which, in 1803, was “of vast circumference,” the “pride of Lorton Vale,” and described as: 

    ’a living thing
  Produced too slowly ever to decay;
  Of form and aspect too magnificent
  To be destroyed—­’

does not now verify its poet’s prediction of the future.  Mr. Wilson Robinson of Whinfell Hall, Cockermouth, wrote to me of it in May 1880: