Spenser. 
Black Poplar 
(AFFLICTION.) 
“The poplar, never dry.” 
T PIE Black Poplar is no less celebrated in heathen fable 
than its fair sister ; the poets telling us that the Heliades, 
daughters of Apollo, gave way to such excessive grief at the 
loss of their brother, the ambitious young Phaeton, that in com¬ 
passion, the gods transformed them into poplars, and their tears 
—which continued to ooze through the bark—into amber. 
Unfortunately, some little discrepancies appear to exist in 
this pathetic story, some of its narrators assigning the honour 
of the metamorphosis to the poplar, and some to the alder. 
Ovid, a great authority, who gives the legend with much cir¬ 
cumstantial evidence, merely says the sisters, wandering on 
the banks of the Po, into which river their unhappy brother 
had been hurled, were changed into trees : 
“When now the eldest, Phsethusa, strove 
To rest her weary limbs, but could not move, 
Lampetia would have help’d her, but she found 
Herself withheld, and rooted to the ground: 
The third in wild affliction as she grieves, 
Would rend her hair, but fills her hands with leaves. 
» * * * * * * 
“ The new-made trees in tears of amber run, 
Which, hardened into value by the sun, 
Distil for ever on the stream below.” 
It is undoubtedly true that the black poplar flourishes on 
the banks of the Po ; and likewise, that it, as many other 
aquatic trees, becomes so surcharged with moisture as to have 
it exude through the pores of the leaves, which may thus 
literally be said to weep. 
It does not conduce to the clearness of this antique allegory 
