THE WILLOW. 



THE Willow is of all trees the most celebrated in 

 romance and romantic history. Its habit of growing 

 by the sides of lakes and rivers, and of spreading its 

 long branches over wells in solitary pastures, has given 

 it a peculiar significance in poetry as the accompaniment 

 of pastoral scenes, and renders it one of the most inter- 

 esting objects in landscape. Hence there is hardly a 

 song of nature, a rustic lay of shepherds, a Latin eclogue, 

 or any descriptive poem, that does not make frequent 

 mention of the Willow. The piping sounds from wet 

 places in the spring of the year, the songs of the earliest 

 birds, and the hum of bees when they first go abroad 

 after their winter's rest, are all delightfully associated 

 with this tree. We breathe the perfume of its flowers 

 before the meadows are spangled with violets, and when 

 the crocus has just appeared in the gardens ; and its early 

 bloom makes it a conspicuous object when it comes forth 

 under an April sky, gleaming with a drapery of golden 

 verdure among the still naked trees of the forest and 

 orchard. 



When Spring has closed her delicate flowers, and the 

 multitudes that crowd around the footsteps of May have 

 yielded their places to the brighter host of June, the 

 Willow scatters the golden aments that adorned it, 

 and appears in the deeper garniture of its own green 

 foliage. The hum of insects is no longer heard among 

 the boughs in quest of honey, but the notes of the phebe 

 and the summer yellow-bird, that love to nestle in their 



