9 ° 
Weeping Willow. 
He demanded the song; but, oh, never 
That triumph the stranger shall know! 
May this right hand be withered for ever 
Ere it string our high harp for the foe! 
“ On the willows that 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 note be blended " 
With the voice of the spoiler by me.” 
Ever, from the earliest times, the willow has been regarded 
as the emblem of grief, and as such our older poets have fre¬ 
quently connected it with forsaken and unhappy lovers. There 
is an ancient ballad in “ Percy’s Reliques,” entitled “ The Wil¬ 
low Tree,” being a pastoral dialogue between two rural swains, 
in which this tree is depicted as the ensign of mourning: 
Willy speaks: 
“How now, shepherde, what meanes that? 
Why that willowe in thy hat ? 
Why thy scarffes of red and yellowe 
Turned to branches of green willowe?” 
Cuddy replies: 
“ They are changed, and so am I; 
Sorrowes live, but pleasures die: 
Phillis hath forsaken mee, 
Which makes me weare the willowe-tree.” 
Willy speaks: 
“Shepherde, be advised by mee, 
Cast off grief and willowe-tree; 
For thy grief brings her content; 
She is pleased if thou lament.” 
Cuddy answers: 
“ Herdsman, I ’ll be ruled by thee,— 
There liees grief and willowe-tree; 
Henceforth I will do as they, 
And love a new love every day. ” 
Percy includes in his valuable collection another still older 
and more pathetic ballad, named after the willow, and believes 
it to be the song that Desdemona thus affectingly introduces: 
“ My mother had a maid called Barbara: 
She was in love; and he she lov’d prov’d mad, 
And did forsake her. She had a song of ‘ Willow.* 
An old thing’t was, but it express’d her fortune, 
And she died singing it.” 
