Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is a natural place to start:
Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
Stanley Spencer, "The Vale of Health, Hampstead" (c. 1940)
Did Thomas Hardy have Gray's "yew-tree's shade" in mind when he wrote the closing lines of the following poem?
Lying Awake
You, Morningtide Star, now are steady-eyed, over the east,
I know it as if I saw you;
You, Beeches, engrave on the sky your thin twigs, even the least;
Had I paper and pencil I'd draw you.
You, Meadow, are white with your counterpane cover of dew,
I see it as if I were there;
You, Churchyard, are lightening faint from the shade of the yew,
The names creeping out everywhere.
Thomas Hardy, Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres (1928).
Putting aside yews for a moment, notice the downward movement of the poem: from the Morningtide Star in the sky, to the twigs of the Beeches against the sky, to the earth of the Meadow, and then to the Churchyard, with its graves. "The names creeping out everywhere" is marvelous, isn't it? The combination of emotional impact and exactly-accurate description (picture in your mind's eye the engraved names on the tombstones gradually becoming more distinct as the sun rises -- the shadows in the recessed letters) is wonderful. It is one of Hardy's finest lines, I think.
Stanley Spencer, "Port Glasgow Cemetery" (1957)
On a more humorous note, here is the final stanza (fittingly) of Louis MacNeice's "Tree Party":
Your health, Master Yew. My bones are few
And I fully admit my rent is due,
But do not be vexed, I will postdate a cheque for you.
Louis MacNeice, The Burning Perch (1963).
Stanley Spencer, "Rock Gardens, Cookham Dean" (1940-1947)
The Yew
The moon gave no light.
The clouds rode slowly over, broad and white,
From the soft south west.
The wind, that cannot rest,
Soothed and then waked the darkness of the yew
Until the tree was restless too.
Of all the winds I knew
I thought, and how they muttered in the yew,
Or raved under the eaves,
Or nosed the fallen dry leaves,
Or with harsh voice holloa'd the orchard round,
With snapped limbs littering the ground.
And I thought how the yew
Between the window and the west his shadow threw,
Grave and immense,
Darkening the dark past thought and sense,
And how the moon would make the darkness heavenly bright:
But the moon gave no light.
John Freeman, Poems New and Old (1920).
Stanley Spencer, "Landscape, Cookham Dean" (c. 1939)
