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CHAP. CIII. SALICA'CEH SA‘LIX. 1463 
Among the British poets who have sung this plant, most have alluded to the 
willow being considered the emblem of despairing love. Herrick says, -—— 
“© A willow garland thou didst send 
Perfumed last day to me ; 
Which did but only this portend, 
1 was forsook by thee. 
Since so it is, Ill tell thee what, 
‘To-morrow thou shalt see 
Me wear the willow, after that 
To die upon the tree:” 
and Spenser calls the tree 
** The willow, worn by furlorn paramour.” 
Shakspeare thus represents Dido lamenting the loss of Eneas : — 
* In such a night 
Stood Dido, with a willow in her hand, 
Upon the wild sea banks, and waved her love 
To come again to Carthage ;”’ 
and, again, in relating the death of Ophelia,— 
** There is a willow grows ascaunt the brook 
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream. 
Therewith fantastic garlands did she make, 
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies and long purples. 
There on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds 
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke ; 
When down her weedy trophies and herself 
Fell in the weeping brook.” 
Cowper says, — 
** We pass a gulf in which the willows dip 
Their pendent boughs, stooping as if to drink.” 
The allusions to this tree by modern poets are still more numerous ; but, as 
they are too many to be all quoted, and as most of them are, besides, very well 
known, we shall content ourselves with the following : — 
** Odours abroad the winds of morning breathe, 
And, fresh with dew, the herbage sprang beneath : 
Down from the bills that gently sloped away 
To the broad river shining into day 
They pass’d ; along the brink the path they kept, 
Where high aloof o’erarching willows wept, 
Whose silvery foliage glisten’d in the beam, 
And floating shadows fringed the chequer’d stream.” MontTGoMERry. 
The quotation from Lord Byron, given below, refers to the weeping willow, 
and to the beautiful passage, hereafter quoted, when speaking of Salix baby- 
lonica, from the Psalms of David. 
** On the willow thy harp is suspended, 
O Salem! its sound should be free ; 
And the hour when thy glories were ended 
But left me that token of thee ; 
And ne’er shall its soft notes be blended 
With the voice of the spoiler by me.” Hebrew Melodies. 
The legendary origin of the weeping willow, according to the Arabian story- 
tellers, is as follows. “ They say that,after David had married Bathsheba, he was 
one day playing on his harp in his private chamber, when he found two strangers 
opposite to him, though he had given strict orders that no one should intrude 
upon his privacy. These strangers were angels, who made him convict himself 
of his crime, nearly in the same manner as it is related in Holy Writ. David then 
recognised in the strangers the angels of the Lord, and was sensible of the 
heinousness of his offence. Forthwith he threw himself upon the floor, and 
shed tears of bitter repentance. There he lay for forty days and forty nights 
upon his face, weeping and trembling before the judgment of the Lord. As 
many tears of repentance as the whole human race have shed, and will shed on 
account of their sins, from the time of David till the judgment-day, so many 
did David weep in those forty days, all the while moaning forth psalms of 
penitence. The tears from his eyes formed two streams, which ran from the 
