March — Barbaras Song, 73 



sudden reappearance of the fresh young green on wil- 

 lows, at a distance, as the light touches or abandons 

 them. We have something of the same kind, but more 

 sublime, in the evanescence and reappearance of crags 

 or knolls on the sides of all noble mountains, whose 

 structure can never be quite accurately ascertained 

 unless you can make models of them by tedious sur- 

 veys, and which cheat us and amuse us by endless alter- 

 ations and disguises. 



XIV. 



The Willow — Associated with Unhappiness — Desdemona — Barbara's 

 Song — Ophelia — The Willow cheerful in Itself — Cheerful use of 

 Willow — In Tennyson — In Virgil — Melody of the English Name 

 — The Latin Name — The Italian Name — The French Name — In 

 Lamartine. 



I WONDER how it is that so cheerful-looking a tree 

 as the willow should ever have become associated 

 with ideas of sadness. Yet the association was estab- 

 lished by the great poets long ago, and must have been 

 found by them already in the popular mind. It is es- 

 pecially connected with unhappiness in love, and unhap- 

 piness on the side of the woman when neglected and 

 forsaken. So Desdemona says, — 



1 My mother had a maid called Barbara : 

 She was in love ; and he she loved proved mad, 

 And did forsake her : she had a song of " willow ; " 

 An old thing 'twas, but it expressed her fortune, 

 And she died singing it.' 



