Explore "The Cypress-Tree of Ceylon" by John Greenleaf Whittier on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Ibn Batuta, the celebrated Mussulman traveller of the fourteenth century, speaks of a cypress-tree in Ceylon, universally held sacred by the natives, the leaves of which were said to fall only at certain intervals, and he who had the happiness to find and eat one of them was restored, at once, to youth and vigor. The traveller saw several venerable Jogees, or saints, sitting silent and motionless under the tree, patiently awaiting the falling of a leaf.
THEY sat in silent watchfulness The sacred cypress-tree about, And, from beneath old wrinkled brows, Their failing eyes looked out.