The English Yew, Taxus bacata--Ordinary and Fabled

My earliest memory of yew is from a poem. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a historical novel, The White Company, as well as his Sherlock Holmes mysteries (The White Company).  As a teen I loved the book, and remember clearly a poem from it, celebrating a company of medieval archers, which goes in part, 

"What of the bow?

    The bow was made in England:

Of true wood, of yew-wood,

    The wood of English bows;

         So men who are free

         Love the old yew-tree

And the land where the yew-tree grows." (link),

of true wood, of yew-wood

English yews, Taxus bacata, as ornamentals