CHAP. CHI. SALICA^CEuE. SA^LIX. 1463 



Among the British poets who have sung this plant, most have alluded to the 

 willow being considered the emblem of despairing love. Herrick says, — 



" A willow garland thou didst send 



Perfumed last day to me ; 

 Which did but only this portend, 



I was forsook by thee. 

 Since so it is, I 'II tell thee what, 



To-morrow thou shalt see 

 Me wear the willow, after that 



To die upon the tree : " 



and Spenser calls the tree 



" The willow, worn by forlorn paramour." 



Shakspearc thus represents Dido lamenting the loss of iEneas : — 



" In such a night 



Stood Dido, with a willow in her hand, 

 Upon the wild sea banks, and waved her love 

 To come again to Carthage ; " 



and, again, in relating the death of Ophelia, — 



" There is a willow grows ascaunt the brook 

 That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream. 

 Therewith fantastic garlands did she make, 

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

 There on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds 

 Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke ; 

 When down her weedy trophies and herself 

 Fell in the weeping brook." 



Cowper says, 



" We pass a gulf in which the willows dip 

 Their pendent boughs, stooping as if to drink. 



The allusions to this tree by modern poets are still more numerous ; but, as 

 they are too many to be all quoted, and as most of them are, besides, very 

 well known, we shall content ourselves with the following : — 



" Odours abroad the wings of morning breathe, 

 And, fresh with dew, the herbage sprang beneath ; 

 Down from the hills that gently sloped away 

 To the broad river shining into day 

 They pass'd ; along the brink the path they kept, 

 Where high aloof o'erarching willows wept, 

 Whose silvery foliage glisten'd in the beam, 

 And floating shadows fringed the chequer'd stream." Montgomery. 



The quotation from Lord Byron, given below, refers to the weeping willow, 

 and to the beautiful passage, hereafter quoted, when speaking of £alix baby- 

 lonica, from the Psalms of David. 



'• On the willow thy harp is'suspended, 



O Salem ! its sound should be free ; 

 And the hour when thy glories were ended 



But left me that token of thee ; 

 And ne'er shall its soft notes be blended 



With the voice of the spoiler by me." Hebrew Melodies. 



The legendary origin of the weeping willow, according to the Arabian story- 

 tellers, is as follows. '* They say that, after David had married Bathsheba, he 

 was one day playing on his harp in his private chamber, when he found two 

 strangers opposite to him, though he had given strict orders that no one 

 should intrude upon his privacy. These strangers were angels, who made him 

 convict himself of his crime, nearly in the same manner as it is related in Holy 

 Writ. David then recognised in the strangers the angels of the Lord, and was 

 sensible of the heinousness of his offence. Forthwith he threw himself upon 

 the floor, and shed tears of bitter repentance. There he lay for forty days and 

 forty nights upon his face, weeping and trembling before the judgment of the 

 Lord. As many tears of repentance as the whole human race have shed, and 

 will shed on account of their sins, from the time of David till the judgment- 

 day, so many did David weep in those forty days, all the while moaning forth 

 psalms of penitence. The tears from his eyes formed two streams, which ran 



