Monday, March 17, 2008

Requiem to a Willow

I sat beneath a willow tree,
Where water falls and calls;
While fancies upon fancies solaced me,
Some true, and some were false.

On this first fleeting day of Spring,
For Winter is gone by,
And every bird on every quivering wing
Floats in a sunny sky;

On this first Summer-like soft day,
While sunshine steeps the air,
And every cloud has gat itself away,
And birds sing everywhere.

Have you no purpose in the world
But thus to shadow me
With all your tender drooping twigs unfurled,
O weeping willow tree?

With all your tremulous leaves outspread
Betwixt me and the sun,
While here I loiter on a mossy bed
With half my work undone;

Slow wind sighed through the willow leaves,
The ripple made a moan,
The world drooped murmuring like a thing that grieves;
And then I felt alone.

I rose to go, and felt the chill,
And shivered as I went;
Yet shivering wondered, and I wonder still,
What more that willow meant;

That silvery weeping willow tree
With all leaves shivering,
Which spent one long day overshadowing me
Beside a spring in Spring.

Excerpted from "In the Willow Shade"
by Christina Georgina Rossetti


4 comments:

  1. Wow...I'm sorry you lost your tree. It looked like it was a great feature in your garden. Did a storm get your tree? If some part if it is still alive you may be able to plant a limb and have it regrow. It would take some time to reach what the original was but at least you would have the same tree there!

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  2. Thanks Dave and Nancy. It's our neighbor's tree. Since we have pines on our side of the north border, there's not enough space on our property for a tree that would get that large.

    I'm thinking shrubs might be the way to go, and am doing some research on what would work best back there.

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  3. It's always sad to see a large tree go down. But, in the long run, you'll probably find that you're better off without the Willow. There are many beautiful, better behaved trees & shrubs. (I find Weeping Willows are best admired from a distance.)

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  4. MMD, it's not so much the tree as the privacy that I'm mourning! It's very strange out there now without that tree.

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