Poems (Denver)/The Willow Tree

by Mary Caroline Denver

THE WILLOW TREES.

They stood beside the sunlit stream that murmured by the door,
How many a joyous melody its little voice would pour
As wild and most untamably dashed on its slender tide,
Clad in the garments of a song, were song personified.

It hurried in the sunshine, yet loitered in the shade,
Pausing to hear the music its own mirthfulness had made:
When boughs so thickly interlaced would scarce admit a breeze,
To whisper of their loveliness—those weeping willow trees!

Those two old weeping willows that look'd so sadly down,
As if they mourned a brilliant gem, stolen from the earth's fair crown;
Their slender branches dipping in the clear, transparent wave,
And scattering all the drops around, as if 'twere tears they gave.

I see them now, as I have seen, in many a day gone by,
Ere memory hid them in her heart, 'mongst treasured things to lie,
When life first found me on its shore, a thing of light and love,
With dear Virginia's soil beneath, Virginia's skies above.

I see them, and that gray old house that stood so meekly there,
Where an aged couple dwelt, whose brows were furrow'd o'er with care,
With a lovely grandchild by their side, whose bright and laughing eyes
Lit their declining years, as lights the sun the evening sky.

Sweet Emily! I see her, as in many a long past hour,
Brush back the hours as she would brush the dewdrop from a flower;
I well remember how my heart was won whene'er she smiled,
For she was a lovely woman then, and I a little child.

She, too, is gone! her voice no more will mingle with the stream,
Her eye no more add beauty to the rays that on it gleam;
Yet I know her heart, like mine, will swell, whene'er the evening breeze
Sighs, as it used to sigh amidst those weeping willow trees.