quotations about leaves
As seasons unravel ... I muse that, even though the tree has lost its leaves, it may be haunted by the memory of their warmth.
JADE CUTTLE
"A plate of poetry, please: Leaves and lovers", Varsity Online, May 23, 2016
Each particle of matter is an immensity, each leaf a world, each insect an inexplicable compendium.
JOHANN CASPAR LAVATER
Physiognomy
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"
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 fall of leaves is an emblem of the decline of life.
R. TREVOR
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
Are ye the ghosts of fallen leaves,
O flakes of snow,
For which, through naked trees, the winds
A-mourning go?
JOHN BANISTER TABB
"Phantoms", Poems
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
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
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
A chaplet of leaves crowns the victor.
VIRGIL
attributed, Day's Collacon
The leaves do not change color from the blighting touch of the frost, but from the process of natural decay. They fall when the fruit has been ripened and their work is done. And their splendid change of coloring is but their graceful and beautiful surrender of life, when they have finished their summer offering of service to God and man.
TRYON EDWARDS
Light for the Day
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
EMILY BRONTË
"Fall, Leaves, Fall"
The universe is a vast system of exchange. Every artery of it is in motion, throbbing with reciprocity, from the planet to the rotting leaf.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Autumn is a second Spring when every leaf is a flower.
ALBERT CAMUS
attributed, Visions from Earth
We take it for granted that plants have green leaves for photosynthesis, but green vegetation may be a reflection of the solar spectrum on the Earth. Our sun is a G-class (yellow) star, which emits a peak spectrum in the visual range. Additionally, the Earth's atmosphere has a significant effect on the light reaching the ground, making it ideal for plants to absorb in blue or red. What if we discover a habitable planet around a different star? NASA and CalTech have already looked into this possibility. On a planet orbiting an F-class (yellow-white) star, which is somewhat hotter than the sun, photosynthesis will most likely concentrate on blue and green wavelengths, because that's where the energy peak will be. Leaves there will reflect mostly in yellow, orange, and red. It would be "fall" year-round, at least based on the coloration of Earth's vegetation.
STEVEN SPENCE
"Autumn Leaves: Last, Loveliest Smile", Got Science, October 27, 2015
Every leaf is a spacious plain; every line a flowing brook; every period a lofty mountain.
JAMES HERVEY
Meditations Among the Tombs
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
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"
A gust of wind rattles the window, and I look out. Leaves are whooshing all over the place, flying past horizontally as if they have engines of their own.
KATE MESSNER
The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z.