quotations about leaves
Every leaf is a spacious plain; every line a flowing brook; every period a lofty mountain.
JAMES HERVEY
Meditations Among the Tombs
Ho! for the leaves that eddy down,
Crumpled yellow and withered brown,
Hither and yonder and up the street
And trampled under the passing feet;
Swirling, billowing, drifting by,
With a whisper soft and a rustling sigh,
Starting aloft to windy ways,
Telling the coming of bonfire days.
GRACE STRICKLER DAWSON
"Bonfire Days"
Listen! the wind is rising, and the air is wild with leaves, we have had our summer evenings, now for October eves.
HUMBERT WOLFE
P.L.M.: Peoples, Landfalls, Mountains
The calm shade
Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze
That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a balm
To thy sick heart.
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
"Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood"
Now Autumn's fire burns slowly along the woods,
And day by day the dead leaves fall and melt.
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM
"Autumnal Sonnet", Day and Night Songs
And softly through the altered air
Hurries a timid leaf.
EMILY DICKINSON
"Indian Summer"
Ah, the pretty whisperers! It was very well
When the leaves were thick and green, awhile ago--
Leaves are secret-keepers; but since the last leaf fell
There is nothing hidden from the eyes below.
SUSAN COOLIDGE
"Secrets", Verses
The foliage has been losing its freshness through the month of August, and here and there a yellow leaf shows itself like the first gray hair amidst the locks of a beauty who has seen one season too many.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
"The Seasons", Pages from An Old Volume: A Collection of Essays
As fall the light autumnal leaves, one still the other following, till the bough strews all its honors on the earth below.
DANTE ALIGHIERI
The Vision; or Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise
I saw the sunlight in a leafy place,
Bathing itself in liquid green and amber--
Where every flower had tears hid in its petals,
And every leaf was lovely with the rain.
ERNEST RHYS
"April Romance", The Leaf Burners and Other Poems
I love the chill October days, when the brown leaves lie thick and sodden underneath your feet.
JEROME K. JEROME
"Silhouettes"
The gentle wind, a sweet and passionate wooer,
Kisses the blushing leaf.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"Woods in Winter"
Each particle of matter is an immensity, each leaf a world, each insect an inexplicable compendium.
JOHANN CASPAR LAVATER
Physiognomy
A tangerine and russet cascade of kaleidoscopic leaves, creates a tapestry of autumn magic upon the emerald carpet of fading summer.
JUDITH A. LINDBERG
The Organic View
The stripped and shapely
Maple grieves
The ghosts of her
Departed leaves.
JOHN UPDIKE
A Child's Calendar
One skeleton-leaf, white-ribbed, a last year's leaf,
Skipped in a paltry gust, whizzed from the dust,
Leapt the small dusty puddle; and sailing then
Merrily in the sunlight, lodged itself
Between two blossoms in a hawthorn tree.
That was the moment: and the world was changed.
With that insane gay skeleton of a leaf
A world of dead worlds flew to hawthorn trees,
Lodged in the green forks, rattled, rattled their ribs
(As loudly as a dead leaf's ribs can rattle)
Blithely, among bees and blossoms. I cursed,
I shook my stick, dislodged it. To what end?
Its ribs, and all the ribs of all dead worlds,
Would house them now forever as death should:
Cheek by jowl with May.
CONRAD AIKEN
"Dead Leaf in May"
The fall of leaves is an emblem of the decline of life.
R. TREVOR
attributed, Day's Collacon
O bring me a leaf from the Old Forest,
A token so sacred, O bring;
'Twill recall those bright scenes to remembrance,
Old friendships around it will cling.
JOHN D. COSSAR
"A Leaf From the Old Forest"
Do you know why the leaves change colour?... Before a tree sheds a leaf it pumps it full of all the poison it can't rid itself of otherwise. That red there--that's a man's skin blotching with burst veins after an assassin spikes his last meal with roto-weed. The poison spreading through him before he dies.
MARK LAWRENCE
Emperor of Thorns
Autumn is a season of desperate hopes. The leaves are souls begging to turn life on pause. Begging to stop, begging to take a break, hiding under smiles and childish words.
TEODORA SAVU
Listen to the Leaves