'Green As an Arbour Grew Leafy June'

I had seen the phrase before and guessed correctly at its meaning from context but still found the expression puzzling: “widow’s weeds.” It entered English in the fifteenth century and is defined, according to the OED, as “the mourning clothes or weeds of a widow.” Weeds in isolation meant “clothing customarily worn by a widow during a period of mourning for her spouse, and traditionally comprising a black or dark-coloured dress and a veil.” Pairing the words produced memorable alliteration. The phrase stands as evidence of a faded world, what Emerson called “fossil poetry.” I happened on the phrase again in a poem by Walter de la Mare, “A Widow’s Weeds” (Peacock Pie: A Book of Rhymes, 1913): “A poor old Widow in her weeds Sowed her garden with wild-flower seeds; Not too shallow, and not too deep, And down came April -- drip -- drip -- drip. Up shone May, like gold, and soon Green as an arbour grew leafy June. And now all summer she sits and sews Where willow herb, comfrey, bugloss…