Note 287 — Chapter III · (continued 3)
Reading edition
Although Spenser's catalogue of trees occurs in the first canto of the first book of the "Faëry Queene"—the only canto of that exquisite poem actually read by most students of English literature—it is not so generally familiar as to make the quotation of it altogether superfluous:
VII. Enforst to seeke some covert nigh at hand, A shadie grove not farr away they spide, That promist ayde the tempest to withstand; Whose loftie trees, yelad with sommers pride, Did spred so broad, that heavens light did hide, Not perceable with power of any starr: And all within were pathes and alleies wide, With footing worne, and leading inward farr; Faire harbour that them seems; so in they entred ar. VIII. And foorth they passe, with pleasure forward led, Joying to heare the birdes sweete harmony, Which therein shrouded from the tempest dred, Seemd in their song to scorne the cruell sky. Much can they praise the trees so straight and hy, The sayling pine; the cedar stout and tall; The vine-propp elm; the poplar never dry; The builder oake, sole king of forrests all; The aspine good for staves; the cypresse funerall; IX. The laurell, meed of mightie conquerours And poets sage; the firre that weepeth still; The willow, worne of forlorn paramours; The eugh, obedient to the benders will; The birch for shaftes; the sallow for the mill; The mirrhe sweete-bleeding in the bitter wound; The warlike beech; the ash for nothing ill; The fruitfull olive; and the platane round; The carver holme; the maple seeldom inward sound.