«За тополью высокою я вижу там окно...» (Особенности категории рода существительного тополь в русской поэзии)

In this article the reasons defining the choice of variants of gender of the noun «poplar» in a poetic text are considered. The examples of poetic contexts illustrate uncertainty of gender form of the «poplar», which is typical of many nouns with a zero ending and a soft basis of the word. In the process of analysis of the contexts it is established that designations of trees in an artistic text can symbolically denote a particular poetic character. Poetic image of a poplar is characterized by ambivalence, i.e. the ability to associate both male and female. It has been established that grammatical gender is not of decisive importance in the motivation of the correlation «poplar — masculinity» or «poplar - femininity», since it does not predetermine the gender of a poetic character. To a large extent, this correspondence is determined with the help of a number of language means that embody poetic image: epithets, comparisons, metaphors, figurative parallelism, attribute designations. The article reveals that the poetic «poplar» is traditionally characterized by the symbolism of the feminine. This fact is due primarily to folklore tradition and mythological consciousness.