112 THE POPLAR AND THE WILLOW. 



trouble, in the legends bequeathed to us by the 

 ancient fabulists. When the sisters of Phaeton, 

 inconsolable for the untimely end of their brother, 

 were by the pitying deity transformed into trees, 

 poplars were made the memorial, and to this day, 

 every spring, the tears of those unhappy ladies re- 

 appear upon the opening leaf-buds. It was upon 

 a poplar that (Enone found the inscription left by 

 her faithless lover ; it is with a poplar that Virgil 

 connects his exquisite image of the nightingale 

 robbed of her nest : 



Qualis populea moerens Philomela sub umbra 

 Amissos queritur fetus, quos durus arator 

 Observans nido implumes detraxit : at ilia 

 Flet noctem, ramoque sedens miserabile carmen 

 Integral, et mcestis late loca questibus implet. 



" As the mourning nightingale within a poplar shade 

 grieves for her lost young, which the ruthless 

 ploughman, espying in her nest, has stolen away 

 unfledged. But she weeps throughout the night, 

 and seated on a bough, still renews her sorrowful 

 song, and fills all the air with piteous wailings." 



Similarly, with the willow we find connected the 

 fable of Arethusa, whose bathing in a stream over- 

 hung with these trees, mingled with poplars, led 

 to the events that caused her transformation into 

 the spring which retains her name to the present 

 moment. Transferring our interests from the 

 remote past to the days of Hamlet, how beautifully 



