74 March Ophelia. 



Then Desdemona sings Barbara's song, with the refrain, 



' Sing willow, willow, willow ; 

 Sing all a green willow must be my garland? 



And in ' Hamlet,' when Shakspeare wishes to give 

 a poetical melancholy to the brook where Ophelia was 

 drowned, he introduces a willow in the very beginning 

 of the Queen's description, so that the word occurs in the 

 first verse, and is the first substantive in the verse : 



* There is a willow grows aslant a brook, 

 That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream ; 

 There with fantastic garlands did she come 

 Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples, 

 That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, 

 But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them : 

 There, on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds 

 Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke ; 

 When down her weedy trophies, and herself, 

 Fell in the weeping brook.' 



This association seems the more curious that the wil- 

 low is one of the lightest, liveliest, and most cheerful- 

 looking of all the trees that grow. There is nothing 

 funereal about its leaves either in form or color, and they 

 play in the wind like butterflies. See how well the tree 

 comes in when Tennyson uses it in the pleasant allegro 

 overture to the ' Lady of Shalott ' : 



1 Willows whiten, aspens quiver, 

 Little breezes dusk and shiver, 

 Through the wave that runs for ever 

 By the island in the river 



Flowing down to Camelot.' 



And how sweetly and cheerfully the willow occurs to 



