DECIDUOUS ORNAMENTAL TREES. 237 



abandoned harps, which one may fancy to have be- 

 queathed their last tones of music to its pensile branches 

 Since that period, the willow appears to have been, 

 more or less, consecrated to a tender sentiment of grief 



" Trailing low its boughs, to hide 

 The gleaming marble." 



To these offices of pensive melancholy, it appears to 

 be dedicated in almost all countries. The Chinese and 

 other Asiatic nations, and the Turks, as well as the 

 enlightened Europeans, universally plant it in theii 

 cemeteries and last places of repose. A French writei 

 thus speaks of it in contrasting its merits for those 

 purposes, with the cypress. " The cypress was long 

 considered as the appropriate ornament of the cemetery ; 

 but its gloomy shade among the tombs, and its thick, 

 heavy foliage of the darkest green, inspire only depress- 

 ing thoughts, and present the image of death under its 

 most appalling form. The Weeping willow, on the 

 contrary, rather conveys a picture of grief for the loss 

 of the departed, than of the darkness of the grave. Its 

 light and elegant foliage flows like the dishevelled hair 

 and graceful drapery of a sculptured mourner over a 

 sepulchral urn ; and conveys those soothing, though 

 softly melancholy reflections which have made one of our 

 poets exclaim, ' There is a pleasure even in grief.' " * 

 On this passage, Loudon remarks : " Notwithstanding the 

 preference thus given the willow, the shape of the cypress 

 conveying to a fanciful mind the idea of a flame pointing 

 upwards, has been supposed to afford an emblem of the 

 hope of immortality ; it is still planted in many church- 



• Poiteau, "nouveaudu Haniel." 



