"Weeping willow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as might be expected, had many superstitious notions connected with it, since, according to the authorized version of the English Bible, the Israelites are said to have hung their harps on willow trees. The weeping willow is said to have, ever since the time of the Jews' captivity in Babylon, drooped its branches, in sympathy with this circumstance. The common willow was held to be under the protection of the devil, and it was said that, if any were to cast a knot upon a young willow, and sit under ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... consequences to him, pooh-poohed it, taken it philosophically, taken it smilingly, but he had been all the time unable to get his eyes off it, even though he had finally carried it down to the river's edge and hung it upon the bough of the weeping willow tree. His eyes were still upon it, he was still regarding it at long range, through the shack door, getting the foreshorten of it, getting the middle distance, getting the perspective, utterly unable to stop his ceaseless staring into the emptiness of it, stop wondering what ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... without an effort to smooth them off. I judged him to be a bachelor from the frayed condition of his linen, and he appeared to have sustained a good many bereavements; for he wore at least four mourning rings, besides a brooch representing a lady and a weeping willow at a tomb with an urn on it. I noticed, too, that several rings and seals hung at his watch-chain, as if he were quite laden with remembrances of departed friends. He had glittering eyes,—small, keen, and black,—and thin wide ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... clime, that he must dwell for seven days in a bower, and that he must build it of the boughs of thick trees; and the Rabbins have told him that these thick trees are the palm, the myrtle, and the weeping willow. Even Sarmatia may furnish a weeping willow. The law has told him that he must pluck the fruit of goodly trees, and the Rabbins have explained that goodly fruit on this occasion is confined to the citron. Perhaps, in his despair, he is obliged ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... When lo! forth starting at the sound, From underneath an aged oak That slanted from the islet rock, A damsel guider of its way, A little skiff shot to the bay, That round the promontory steep Led its deep line in graceful sweep, Eddying, in almost viewless wave, The weeping willow twig to rave, And kiss, with whispering sound and slow, The beach of pebbles bright as snow. The boat had touched this silver strand Just as the Hunter left his stand, And stood concealed amid the brake, To view this Lady of the ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... differ but little from the so-called {383} heterophyllous varieties, in which the tree habitually bears leaves of various forms; but it is probable that most heterophyllous trees have originated as seedlings. There is a sub-variety of the weeping willow with leaves rolled up into a spiral coil; and Mr. Masters states that a tree of this kind kept true in his garden for twenty-five years, and then threw out a single upright ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... lose her pet. Its little body can still be seen in the Capella Colleone, up in the old town at Bergamo, lying on a little cushion on the top of a little column, and behind it there stands a little weeping willow tree whose leaves, cut out in green paper, droop over the corpse. In front of the column is the inscription,—"Passer Medeae Colleonis," and the whole is covered by a glass shade about eight inches high. Mr. Festing Jones has kindly allowed me to borrow this note ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... his mother, Let me kiss his dear youthful brow; I will love him for his mother, And seek her blessing now. Kind friends have sooth'd his pillow, Have watched his ev'ry care; Beneath the weeping willow, ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... not greet each other, though they had not met that morning. In the house one said, "Good morning," "I hope you passed a good night," and silly things like that, but not in the green shade of the old orchard. A weeping willow had been turned over in some winter gale many years ago, but had nevertheless managed to go on growing in its new position. It lay like a feathery plume along the side of the Raincy mausoleum. It was not the first time that Louis and ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... piled one upon another to the height of twenty or thirty feet, seemed to float on the surface of the water, while the slight gray stems and the shore were hardly visible between them. No tree is so wedded to the water, and harmonizes so well with still streams. It is even more graceful than the weeping willow, or any pendulous trees, which dip their branches in the stream instead of being buoyed up by it. Its limbs curved outward over the surface as if attracted by it. It had not a New England but an Oriental character, reminding us of trim Persian ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... neck a solid gold chain, thrice coiled, with a massive locket pendant at her bosom. Above the locket was fastened a large memorial brooch with a framework of gold, a face of crystal and, behind the crystal, a weeping willow designed in somebody's hair. Altogether the widow's attire and array suggested that she had recently dismissed, or was ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... George III. and his consort; a printed pamphlet on Admiral Byng; two strings of shells; a mourning-ring with a lock of hair set between two pearls under glass; another ring with a tiny picture of a fountain and urn, and a weeping willow; a paper containing a baby's caul and a sampler worked with the A.B.C. and the Lord's Prayer and signed "A.C., 1785;" a gourd, a few glass beads, and a Chinese opium-pipe; and lastly, a thick paper roll bound in yellow-stained parchment. The roll was tied about with string, ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... little hillock, under a weeping willow, which stood near the cemetery, and watched the rising shower, which ascended in gloomy pomp, half hidden behind the western groves, shrouding the low sun in black vapour, while coming thunders more nearly and more awfully rolled. The shrieking night hawk[A] soared high into the air, ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... that their eyes caught the glint of it. Fed by many hidden springs it was a still, smooth body of water in the bowl of the hills; it looked cool and deep and had its own air of mystery; in its ancient bosom it may have hidden bones or gold. Some devotee had planted a weeping willow here long ago; the great tree now flourished and cast its reflection ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... of her nose is always red, and, like Father-in-law George, she believes weeping willow the only fit emblem for royalty. The look of the whipped dog is always ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... sands; or who but Tess would mind the squeaking of the mother-bird calling for her own. It was something of this "mollygrub" feeling that hastened her dirt-caked feet, as she rounded the mud cellar near her father's hut, and sped back of the weeping willow tree hanging in green fringes over the cabin. She dropped quickly upon her knees before a large log, which in some former time the flood-waters ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... wife accompanied him. They took the longest way, round the outside of the garden, so as to avoid meeting any one. At the farthest end they came to a little garden-gate which led directly to the secluded summer-house. Close to the little house were two old nut-trees and a weeping willow, with thick pendent branches, and behind, far away into the distance, stretched the soft green meadows. Far and near, all was perfectly still. Uncle Titus had brought several thick books with him, under each arm, for he thought he should like to take ...
— Uncle Titus and His Visit to the Country • Johanna Spyri
... thin bending stem, and spread out its flat head of fan-shaped leaves twenty feet long each: while over it, I verily believe, hangs eighty feet aloft the head of the very tree upon whose roots we are sitting. For amid the green cloud you may see sprigs of leaf somewhat like that of a weeping willow; {140b} and there, probably, is the trunk to which they belong, or rather what will be a trunk at last. At present it is like a number of round-edged boards of every size, set on end, and slowly coalescing at their ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... her companion, to cast an expressive look at the young man, which seemed to say, "Have patience! You see it is not my fault." And Maximilian was patient, and employed himself in mentally contrasting the two girls,—one fair, with soft languishing eyes, a figure gracefully bending like a weeping willow; the other a brunette, with a fierce and haughty expression, and as straight as a poplar. It is unnecessary to state that, in the eyes of the young man, Valentine did not suffer by the contrast. In about ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... not fancy, gentlemen, That she was sad and sighing, Her features pale as any lily, That she had dying eyes, half-shut and blue, And slender figure clothed with languishing, Like to a weeping willow by a limpid lake. Not so, my masters. Franconnette Had two keen flashing eyes, like two live stars; Her laughing cheeks were round, where on a lover might Gather in handfuls roses bright; Brown locks and curly decked her head; Her lips were as the cherry red, Whiter than snow her ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... the great house, were the stately mansions of the dead, a place of somber aspect. Vast tombs, embowered beneath the weeping willow and the fir tree, told of the antiquities of the Lloyd family, as well as of their wealth. Superstition was rife among the slaves about this family burying ground. Strange sights had been seen there by some of the older slaves. Shrouded ghosts, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... color of its foliage and the beautiful form of its dome-like crown, is among the most elegant of trees, the white birch of Central Europe, with its pendulous branches almost rivalling those of the weeping willow in length, flexibility, and gracefulness of fall, and, especially, the "cypresse funerall," might be introduced into the United States with great advantage to the landscape. The European beech and ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... one of his word-pictures: "There was the sapling bending like a weeping willow," he said, "and there was the stag underneath it, looking up at me and asking if he could do anything for me, taking a poke at me boot now and then, just to show nothing would be no bother, and there was ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... omen, and was employed to make the torches carried at funerals. Our own poets made the Willow the symbol of despairing woe."—JOHNS. This is the more remarkable because the tree referred to in the Psalms, the Weeping Willow (Salix Babylonica), which by its habit of growth is to us so suggestive of crushing sorrow, was quite unknown in Europe till a very recent period. "It grows abundantly on the banks of the Euphrates, and other parts of Asia, as in Palestine, and also in North Africa;" but it is said ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... Bring him home, Where the songs of sad hearts shrive him, Where remorse no more shall rive him, Where the ever weeping willow Moults to make its ...
— Soldier Songs and Love Songs • A.H. Laidlaw
... possess more intrinsic merit before he had acquired so many petals. Dr. Yew would not leave his church, nor Dr. Palma Christi his patients; indeed, their absence was not at all regretted, it being owing to a mistake that they were asked. The Ladies Weeping Willow stayed away with the Misses Weeping Ash to mourn over the vanities of the world, which greatly alarmed and ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas |
