Willow Trees Quotes

What a pity every child couldn't learn to read under a willow tree ... ~ Elizabeth George Speare

These ears aren't to be trusted.
The keening in the night, didn't you hear?
Once I believed all the stories didn't have endings,
but I realized the endings were invented, like zero,
had yet to be imagined.
The months come around again,
and we are in the same place;
full moons, cherries in bloom,
the same deer, the same frogs,
the same helpless scratching at the dirt.
You leave poems I can't read
behind on the sheets,
I try to teach you songs made of twigs and frost.
you may be imprisoned in an underwater palace;
I'll come riding to the rescue in disguise.
Leave the magic tricks to me and to the teakettle.
I've inhaled the spells of willow trees,
spat them out as blankets of white crane feathers.
Sleep easy, from behind the closet door
I'll invent our fortunes, spin them from my own skin.

(from, The Fox-Wife's Invitation) ~ Jeannine Hall Gailey

THE WEEPING WILLOW

Flowing was the water
showing in its mirror the willow trees.
The weeping willows in the water were washing their hair!
Striking the willows with their sparkling, bare swords
the red horsemen were running to where the sun sets!
Suddenly
like a bird
as if struck
in the wing
a wounded horseman rolled down from his horse!
He didn't shout,
he did'nt call back those who go along,
he just looked with brimming eyes
at the shining horseshoes of departing riders!

O what a pity!
What a pity for him that
no more he shall lie on the foaming necks of galloping horses,
no more he shall play his sword behind the white armies!

The sounds of the horseshoes fades away slowly,
the horsemen vanish at where the sun sets!

Horsemen horsemen red horsemen,
their horses winged with wind!
Their horses winged with...
Their horses winged...
Their horses...
Horse...

Life has passed like the wind winged horsemen!

The voice of the flowing water ceased.
The shadows shadowed
the colours wiped off.
Black coverings came down
over his blue eyes,
the weeping willows hung down
over his
yellow hair!

Weep not weeping willow
weep not,
in the mirror of the black water clasp not your hands!
clasp not your hands!
weep not! ~ Nâzım Hikmet Ran

The two lovers walked among the willow trees, and the oneness of each was a language speaking of the oneness of both; and an ear listening in silence to the inspiration of love; and a seeing eye seeing the glory of happiness. "Astarte has brought back our souls to this life so that the delights of love and the glory of youth might not be forbidden us, my beloved. ~ Kahlil Gibran

The secret island had looked mysterious enough on the night they had seen it before - but now, swimming in the hot June haze, it seemed more enchanting than ever. As they drew near to it, and saw the willow trees that bent over the water-edge and heard the sharp call of moorhens that scuttled off, the children gazed in delight. Nothing but trees and birds and little wild animals. Oh, what a secret island, all for their very own, to live on and play on. ~ Enid Blyton

God help us
you full of talk of a city called Edinburgh
and me in silence so very deep we were so very much in love.

And the burns and sikes and streams
though shallow
were deep music to us.
You trout-tickler,
you flower-picker,
climber in willow trees, me laughing below

as best I could laugh, though you never thought it ugly.
Indeed the word you used was the word beautiful,
pinning cowslips behind my ears,

you patting and running fingers through our
beckwashed hair.
Lying by the marigold beds
bare toes entwined, then dancing under branches
before the elms ever died. But our mutual hearts never did.

Bar it is 7 and your raining rage
must cease
under my morning moon.
In my dawn shawl looking dawndown upon you
in your foot-striding fellhighhighupuptopheavyrainbeatingrainrain.
We have always walked together so long.
In the long grass we walked and walked forever so long so very language long
and I could say so once you had the slate in my lap.

My tongue blank - FOREVER, word we wrote on a slate, remember
when you taught me? - only my hands and eyes moving now - two
daughters we could have had -

but I am looking kindly and lovingly on you
'Please do it'
- cool your raging fire lovelorn heart - for me.

And love me - forever. ~ Barry MacSweeney

Just Me, Just Me
Sweet Marie, she loves just me
(She also loves Maurice McGhee).
No she don't, she loves just me
(She also loves Louise Dupree).
No she don't, she loves just me
(She also loves the willow tree).
No she don't, she loves just me!
(Poor, poor fool, why can't you see
She can love others and still love thee.) ~ Shel Silverstein

The grounds of the place were dominated by several large, old willow trees that towered over the surrounding stone wall and swayed soundlessly in the wind like lost souls. ~ Haruki Murakami

The land was green: in the wet meads and along the grassy borders of the stream grew many willow-trees. Already in this southern land they were blushing red at their fingertips, feeling the approach of spring. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

All a green willow, willow, All a green willow is my garland. ~ John Heywood

Walking on willow tree roads by a river dappled with peach blossoms, I look for spring light, but am everywhere lost. Birds fly up and scatter floating catkins. A ponderous wave of flowers sags the branches. ~ Wang Wei

Willow trees are kind, Dear God. They will not bear a body on their limbs. ~ Alice Dunbar Nelson

In a world where thrushes sing and willow trees are golden in the spring, boredom should have been included among the seven deadly sins. ~ Elizabeth Goudge

They all stood unwilling on the sandbar, holding to the net. In the eastern sky were the familiar castles and the round towers to which they were used, gray, pink, and blue, growing darker and filling with thunder. Lightning flickered in the sun along their thick walls. But in the west the sun shone with such a violence that in an illumination like a long-prolonged glare of lightning the heavens looked black and white; all color left the world, the goldenness of everything was like a memory, and only heat, a kind of glamor and oppression, lay on their heads. The thick heavy trees on the other side of the river were brushed with mile-long streaks of silver, and a wind touched each man on the forehead. At the same time there was a long roll of thunder that began behind them, came up and down mountains and valleys of air, passed over their heads, and left them listening still. With a small, near noise a mockingbird followed it, the little white bars of its body flashing over the willow trees.

'We are here for a storm now,' Virgil said. 'We will have to stay till it's over.'

("The Wide Net") ~ Eudora Welty

How could the wind be so strong, so far inland, that cyclists
coming into the town in the late afternoon looked more like
sailors in peril? This was on the way into Cambridge, up Mill
Road past the cemetery and the workhouse. On the open
ground to the left the willow-trees had been blown, driven
and cracked until their branches gave way and lay about the
drenched grass, jerking convulsively and trailing cataracts of
twigs. The cows had gone mad, tossing up the silvery weeping
leaves which were suddenly, quite contrary to all their exper-
ience, everywhere within reach. Their horns were festooned
with willow boughs. Not being able to see properly, they
tripped and fell. Two or three of them were wallowing on
their backs, idiotically, exhibiting vast pale bellies intended by
nature to be always hidden. They were still munching. A scene
of disorder, tree-tops on the earth, legs in the air, in a university
city devoted to logic and reason. ~ Penelope Fitzgerald

A framed photo on a dusty bookshelf caught his attention; he moved closer and picked it up silently. A small girl with long blond hair was standing under a tree, her face tilted up in delight as its feathery leaves brushed across her face, framing it.
A willow tree. Willow. ~ L.A. Weatherly

Willow trees, willow trees they remind me of Desdemona
I'm so damned literary
and at the same time the waters rushing past remind
me of nothing ~ Frank O'Hara

One night he sits up. In cots around him are a few dozen sick or wounded. A warm September wind pours across the countryside and sets the walls of the tent rippling.

Werner's head swivels lightly on his neck. The wind is strong and gusting stronger, and the corners of the tent strain against their guy ropes, and where the flaps at the two ends come up, he can see trees buck and sway. Everything rustles. Werner zips his old notebook and the little house into his duffel and the man beside him murmurs questions to himself and the rest of the ruined company sleeps. Even Werner's thirst has faded. He feels only the raw, impassive surge of the moonlight as it strikes the tent above him and scatters. Out there, through the open flaps of the tent, clouds hurtle above treetops. Toward Germany, toward home.

Silver and blue, blue and silver.

Sheets of paper tumble down the rows of cots, and in Werner's chest comes a quickening. He sees Frau Elena kneel beside the coal stove and bank up the fire. Children in their beds. Baby Jutta sleeps in her cradle. His father lights a lamp, steps into an elevator, and disappears.

The voice of Volkheimer: What you could be.

Werner's body seems to have gone weightless under his blanket, and beyond the flapping tent doors, the trees dance and the clouds keep up their huge billowing march, and he swings first one leg and then the other off the edge of the bed.

"Ernst," says the man beside ~ Anthony Doerr

Billions of years ago exploding stars sent atoms hurtling through space and we've been recycling them on Earth ever since. Except for the occasional comet, meteor, some interstellar dust, we've used exactly the same atoms over and over since the earth was formed. We eat them, we drink them, we breathe them, we are made of them. At this precise moment each of us is exchanging our atoms with everyone else, and not just with each other, but with other animals, trees, fungi, moulds... ~ Nathan Filer

Do you hear the snow against the windowpanes, Kitty? How nice and soft it sounds! Just as if some one was kissing the window all over outside. I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, 'Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.' And when they wake up in the summer, Kitty, they dress themselves all in green, and dance about - whenever the wind blows ... ~ Lewis Carroll

Hey dol! merry dol! ring a dong dillo!
Ring a dong! hop along! fal lal the willow!
Tom Bom, jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo! ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

He is a demon, Clarissa," said Valentine, still in the same soft voice. "A demon with a man's face. I know how deceptive such monsters can be. Remember, I spared him once myself."
"Monster?" echoed Clary. She thought of Luke, Luke pushing her on the swings when she was five years old, higher, always higher; Luke at her graduation from middle school, camera clicking away like a proud father's; Luke sorting through each box of books as it arrived at his store, looking for anything she might like and putting it aside. Luke lifting her up to pull apples down from the trees near his farmhouse. Luke, whose place as her father this man was trying to take. "Luke isn't a monster," she said in a voice that matched Valentine's, steel for steel. "Or a murderer. You are."
"Clary!" It was Jace.
Clary ignored him. Her eyes were fixed on her father's cold black ones. "You murdered your wife's parents, not in battle but in cold blood," she said. "And I bet you murdered Michael Wayland and his little boy, too. Threw their bones in with my grandparents' so that my mother would think you and Jace were dead. Put your necklace around Michael Wayland's neck before you burned him so everyone would think those bones were yours. After all your talk about the untainted blood of the Clave - you didn't care at all about their blood or their innocence when you killed them, did you? Slaughtering old people and children in cold blood, that's monstrous. ~ Cassandra Clare

We'll ride along the river. It's a mighty pretty sight..." Puffy white clouds floated across the azure blue sky. Pine-covered mountains crowned with snowcaps folded down into foothills that ringed the valley. Beneath the clouds the play of sun and shadow cast hazy blue-green patches on the mountainsides. A distant large-winged bird rode on air currents before diving into a clump of trees. ~ Debra Holland

Then she sighed. Just the faintest, softest release of breath. The sound swept through his chest like a hurricane, with the force to topple trees. ~ Tessa Dare

There is a sky and trees, a high wire fence, a long road, and at the end of it you are there, waiting for me. So glad to see you, I say, misses you so much, thought about you ever day. ~ A.M. Homes

The same wind that uproots trees makes the grass shine. The lordly wind loves the weakness and the lowness of grasses. Never brag of being strong. The axe doesn't worry how thick the branches are. It cuts them to pieces. But not the leaves. It leaves the leaves alone. ~ Rumi

Darkness tests stars,
but they shine.
Storms test trees,
but they stand.
Adversity tests the great,
but they soar. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

O that I were stored with a secret, like unshed rain in summer clouds - a secret, folded up in silence, that I could wander away with.

O that I had someone to whisper to, where slow waters lap under trees that doze in the sun.

The hush this evening seems to expect a footfall, and you ask me for the cause of my tears.

I cannot give a reason why I weep, for that is a secret still withheld from me. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

here is nothing to see, however, and not a soul to meet. You might walk for twenty miles along this track without being able to fix a point in your mind, unless you are a bushman. This is because of the everlasting, maddening sameness of the stunted trees - that monotony which makes a man long to break away and travel as far as trains can go, and sail as far as ship can sail - and farther. ~ Henry Lawson

The park lies directly downwind from a slew of coal plants. Virtually all of the major contaminants in the local air and water are direct results of coal emissions. Coal produces ozone, which kills trees. Coal produces sulfates, which kill fish. No other park in the country has more ozone or sulfates than Shenandoah National Park. ~ Wil S. Hylton

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: "It's not where you take things from - it's where you take them to."
[MovieMaker Magazine #53 - Winter, January 22, 2004 ] ~ Jim Jarmusch

We were about a mile from school, on a path in the park, when Chirag reached down and took off his shoes, tossing them into the trees beside us.

"What are you doing?" I shouted in between breaths. Step, breath. Step, breath. He was a few yards ahead of me. I took advantage of his pause to pass him; I wasn't about to let him beat me.

"There's a tribe of Indians in Mexico who are the best runners in the world," he shouted. "They run barefoot for miles and miles and never break a sweat."

"You're not that kind of Indian," I shouted back, and Chirag laughed, his golden skin shimmering beneath his sweat.

"You should try it, too!"

"No way!" I replied without turning around to face him. "The ground is filthy. There could be glass or splinters or something."

"Aw, come on, Maisie," he cooed, coming up on my left side and getting a few steps ahead of me once more. "I dare you. ~ Alyssa B. Sheinmel

Being half Jewish, we grew up with Christmas trees but had Jewish ornaments. ~ Gina Rodriguez

Tom has been having a difficult patch, and we meet at the church of IKEA as often as possible, because it is equidistant from our houses and always cheers us up. Yesterday I asked, 'In your depression, and with so many people having such a hard time, where is Advent?' He tried to wiggle out of it by saying, 'You Protestants and your little questions!' Then, when pushed, he said: 'Faith is a decision. Do we believe we are ultimately doomed and fucked and there's no way out? Or that God and goodness make a difference? There is heaven, community, and hope - and hope that there is life beyond the grave.'
'But Tom, at the same time, the grave is very real, dark and cold and lonely.' 'Advent is not for the naive. Because in spite of the dark and cold, we see light - you look up, or you make light, with candles, or with strands of lightbulbs on trees. And you give light. Beauty helps, in art and nature and faces. Friends help. Solidarity helps. If you ask me, when people return phone calls, it's about as good as it gets. And who knows beyond that. ~ Anne Lamott

One should think in terms of whether one is loving or not. The question of the object of love does not arise. With your wife, you love your wife; with your children, you love your children; with your servants, you love your servants; with your friends, you love your friends; with the trees, you love the trees; with the ocean, you love the ocean. You are love. Love is not dependent on the object, but is a radiation of your subjectivity - a radiation of your soul. And the vaster the radiation, the greater is your soul. ~ Rajneesh

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.
Here is the fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop. ~ Abel Meeropol

I'm not good with hospitals. The endless buildings, trees dotted around like apologies, and inside, it's job functions you can't understand and that air of incomprehensible busyness. Curtained-off beds and death settling like falling snow. ~ Harry Bingham

More than any other single trait, it is the apple's genetic variability - its ineluctable wildness - that accounts for its ability to make itself at home in places as different from one another as New England and New Zealand, Kazakhstan and California. Wherever the apple tree goes, its offspring propose so many different variations on what it means to be an apple - at least five per apple, several thousand per tree - that a couple of these novelties are almost bound to have whatever qualities it takes to prosper in the tree's adopted home. ~ Michael Pollan

Ledge

Birds that love
high trees
and winds

and riding
flailing branches
hate ledges
as gripless
and narrow,

so that a tail
is not just
no advantage
but ridiculous,
mashed vertical
against the wall.
You will have
seen the way
a bird who falls
on skimpy places

lifts into the air
again in seconds --
a gift denied
the rest of us
when our portion
isn't generous. ~ Kay Ryan

If you reveal your secrets to the wind,
you should not blame the wind for
revealing them to the trees. ~ Kahlil Gibran

Yes, I can see why so many are taken with you. You're so, so, so.." Vincent's words trailed off. He gazed off into the trees. "What's the word I'm looking for?"
"Adorably handsome?" Breccan offered with a smug smile.
"Incredibly stuck on yourself."Vincent quickly gave his retort. "Seriously, you're not that cute. And I mean that in every offending way possible. ~ Madison Thorne Grey

Is the Word the same as God, do you think?"
Pick looked at her some more.
"Well, you don't think there's more than one God, do you?" Nest began to rush her words. "I mean, you don't think that the Word and God and Mother Nature are all different beings? You don't think they're all running around making different things--like God makes humans and the Word makes forest creatures and Mother Nature makes trees? Or that Allah is responsible for one race and one part of the world and Buddha is responsible for some others? You don't think that, do you?"
Pick stared.
"Because all these different countries and all these different races have their own version of God. Their religions teach them who their God is and what He believes. Sometimes the different versions even hold similar beliefs. But no one can agree on whose God is the real God. Everyone insists that everyone else is wrong. But unless there is more than one God, what difference does it make? If there's only one God and He made everything, then what is the point of arguing over whether to call him God or the Word or whatever? It's like arguing over who owns the park. The park is for everyone. ~ Terry Brooks

But the owls themselves are not hard to find, silent and on the wing, with their ear tufts flat against their heads as they fly and their huge wings alternately gliding and flapping as they maneuver through the trees. Athena's owl of wisdom and Merlin's companion, Archimedes, were screech owls surely, not this bird with the glassy gaze, restless on the bough, nothing but blood on its mind. ~ Mary Oliver

Is something a friend once told me. She said that every single one of us at birth is given an emotional acre all our own. You get one, your awful Uncle Phil gets one, I get one, Tricia Nixon gets one, everyone gets one. And as long as you don't hurt anyone, you really get to do with your acre as you please. You can plant fruit trees or flowers or alphabetized rows of vegetables, or nothing at all. If you want your acre to look like a giant garage sale, or an auto-wrecking yard, that's what you get to do with it. There's a fence around your acre, though, with a gate, and if people keep coming onto your land and sliming it or trying to get you to do what they think is right, you get to ask them to leave. And they have to go, because this is your acre. ~ Anne Lamott

And perhaps, Mrs. Morgan on Lanypwll Farm put all this much better in the speech of symbolism, when she murmured about the children of the pool. For if there is a landscape of sadness, there is certainly also a landscape of a horror of darkness and evil; and that black and oily depth, overshadowed with twisted woods, with its growth of foul weeds and its dead trees and leprous boughs, was assuredly potent in terror. To Roberts, it was a strong drug, a drug of evocation; the black deep without calling to the black deep within, and summoning the inhabitant thereof to come forth. ~ Arthur Machen

What the hell are you doing up there?'
So he slipped, of course, because he was startled, and because fate, having been so kind to him as to award him this ecstasy, retributively was going to kill him now. He lost his footing and grabbed for the chimney but missed. Head over thighs he rolled out like a child's toy, smashed into the poking branches of the damn pear tree, which probably saved his life, breaking his fall. He landed with a thud on a bed of lettuces, and the wind was knocked out of him, mortifyingly so, through all available orifices.
Oh, brilliant,' said the voice. 'The trees are dropping their fruits early this year. ~ Gregory Maguire

I'm not really out in the world all that much. I mean, I live with no phone signal, in the hills surrounded by trees, and I have, like, a mom and two baby deer that come by all the time, and my dogs and the squirrels are in a full-on feud every morning. ~ Brie Larson

When days get breezy
Sun rays less harsh
Trees and grass greener
it is easier
to forget the summer here! ~ Myself

If you really want to eat, keep climbing. The fruits are on the top of the tree. Stretch your hands and keep stretching them. Success is on the top, keep going. ~ Israelmore Ayivor

Trees which grow in places facing the course of the sun are not of porous fiber but are solid, being drained by the dryness ... The trees in sunny neighborhoods, therefore, being solidified by the compact texture of their fiber, and not being porous from moisture, are very useful, so far as durability goes, when they are hewn into timber. The lowland firs, being conveyed from sunny places, are better than those highland firs, which are brought here from shady places. ~ Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

To me, nature is sacred; trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals. ~ Mikhail Gorbachev

I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow, the million moving shapes and cul-de-sacs of shadow. There was shadow in bureau drawers and closets and suitcases, and shadow under houses and trees and stones, and shadow at the back of people's eyes and smiles, and shadow, miles and miles and miles of it, on the night side of the earth. ~ Sylvia Plath

Secondly, it is the very nature of spiritual life to grow. Wherever they principle of this life is to be found, it can be no different for it must grow. "But the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day" (Prov. 4:18); "The righteous also shall hold on his way, and he that hath clean hands shall be stronger and stronger" (Job 17:9). This refers to the children of GOd, who are compared to palm and cedar trees (Psa. 92:12). As natural as it is for children and trees to grow, so natural is growth for the regenerated children of God.

Thirdly, the growth of His children is the goal and objective God has in view by administering the means of grace to them. "And He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints...that we henceforth be no more children...but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into Him in all things, which is the Head" (Eph. 4:11-15). This is also to be observed in 1 Peter 2:2: "as newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby, " God will reach His goal and His word will not return to Him void; thus God's children will grow in grace.

Fourthly, is is the duty to which God's children are continually exhorted, and their activity is to consist in a striving for growth. That it is their duty is to be observed in the following passages: "But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord ~ Wilhemus à Brakel

There are occasions when you can hear the mysterious language of the Earth, in water, or coming through the trees, emanating from the mosses, seeping through the under currents of the soil, but you have to be willing to wait and receive. ~ John Hay

It was puzzling to own trees - they were not owned the way a business os owned or even a house is owned. If anything, they were held in trust. In trust. Yes, for all of posterity, ... ~ Philip Roth

Soft sunlight
tall trees
woodsmoke impressions
summery cues
tossed on
this dainty patch
of my recluse.

~ Poem Title VERS LIBÉRÉ, Tara Estacaan ~ Tara Estacaan

I get tired of the same albums, the same look and singing the same songs. When I get bored I paint, I plant trees and just do something different. I get far away from singing. ~ Jason Mraz

I wanted a coffin made of wood
from trees not yet planted
my appetite for time was growing. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

'Lost' makes a lot of sense to me, philosophically. ~ G. Willow Wilson