Weeping Willow. 
(MOURNING.) 
T HE Weeping Willow is one of those natural emblems 
which bear their florigraphical meaning so palpably im¬ 
pressed on their sympathetic faces that the merest novice in 
the language of flowers must comprehend their signification at 
first sight. This tree has ever been regarded as the symbol of 
sorrow , and most appropriately, for not only do its pensive- 
looking branches droop mournfully towards the ground, but 
even very frequently little drops of water are to be seen stand¬ 
ing, like tears, upon the pendent leaves. In its native East it 
is often planted over graves, and with its sorrowful, afflicted 
look, forms a most appropriate guardian of dear departed ones' 
remains. Although it will grow in any ordinary ground, it 
thrives best in the neighbourhood of streams or other moist 
ground, for which situations, indeed, Nature has in every way 
fitted it. Many a delightful English landscape owes a large 
portion of its quiet beauty—its soothing pensiveness—to these 
“ Shadowy trees, that lean 
So elegantly o’er the water’s brim ” 
of the bright little brook that, heedless of man’s joy or grief, 
flows merrily on for ever 
“ By many a field and fallow. 
And many a fairy foreland set 
With willow-mead and mallow.” 
As long ago as Virgil the poets learnt to tell how “willows 
grow about rivers;” or, if we may rely on Pope’s rendering of 
Homer, as far back as the days of “ the blind old man of Scio’s 
rocky isle,” were seen and noted “willows trembling o’er the 
floods.” 
