174 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
or less ovate and beaked, each of which is close¬ 
ly packed with cotton, in which are numerous 
seeds, so small that they are scarcely discern- 
able by ordinary eyes. 
“ The willow worn by forlorn paramour.” 
As if it were the emblem of despairing love! 
It is rather the emblem of triumphant love and 
sympathy with all nature. It may droop, — 
it is so lithe and supple, — but it never weeps. 
The willow of Babylon blooms not the less 
hopefully with us though its other half is not 
in the New England world at all, and never 
has been. It droops not to represent David’s 
tears, but rather to snatch the crown from Alex¬ 
ander’s head. Nor were poplars ever the weep¬ 
ing sisters of Phaeton, for nothing rejoices them 
more than the sight of the sun’s chariot, and 
little reck they who drives it. No wonder its 
wood was anciently in demand for bucklers, for, 
like the whole tree, it is not only soft and pli¬ 
ant, but tough and resilient, not splitting at the 
first blow, but closing its wounds at once, and 
refusing to transmit its hurts. I know of one 
foreign species which introduced itself into Con¬ 
cord as a withe used to tie up a bundle of trees. 
A gardener stuck it in the ground, and it lived, 
and has its descendants. Herodotus says that 
the Scythians divined by the help of willow 
