LEAF QUOTES II

quotations about leaves

The stripped and shapely
Maple grieves
The ghosts of her
Departed leaves.

JOHN UPDIKE

A Child's Calendar

Tags: John Updike


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


And the wind is rising squally and loud
With many a stormy token--
Playing a wild funereal air,
Through the branches bleak, bereaved, and bare,
To the dead leaves dancing here and there.

THOMAS HOOD

"The Forge", Poems of Wit and Humour


So bright in death I used to say,
So beautiful through frost and cold!
A lovelier thing I know to-day,
The leaf is growing old,
And wears in grace of duty done,
The gold and scarlet of the sun.

MARGARET ELIZABETH SANGSTER

"A Maple Leaf"

Tags: Margaret Elizabeth Sangster


Happy, happy, happy for all that God hath done,
Glad of all the little leaves dancing in the sun.

ALFRED NOYES

Drake: An English Epic


A chaplet of leaves crowns the victor.

VIRGIL

attributed, Day's Collacon

Tags: Virgil


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


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"

Tags: William Cullen Bryant


Leaves are light, and useless, and idle, and wavering, and changeable; they even dance; yet God has made them part of oak; in so doing He has given us a lesson not to deny the stout-heartedness within, because we see the lightsomeness without.

JULIUS CHARLES HARE

attributed, Guesses at Truth

Tags: Julius Charles Hare


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


There is not a single leaf which is a mere ornament; all contribute to the fruitfulness of the earth, and the support of its inhabitants.

CHRISTOPH CHRISTIAN STURM

Reflections on the Works of God and of His Providence


The woods are hush'd, their music is no more;
The leaf is dead, the yearning past away;
New leaf, new life--the days of frost are o'er;
New life, new love, to suit the newer day:
New loves are sweet as those that went before:
Free love--free field--we love but while we may.

ALFRED TENNYSON

Idylls of the King

Tags: Alfred Tennyson


In the whisper of the leaves appears an interchange of love.

WILLIAM JONES

attributed, Day's Collacon


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


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


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"

Tags: Conrad Aiken


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


The fall of leaves is an emblem of the decline of life.

R. TREVOR

attributed, Day's Collacon


Each particle of matter is an immensity, each leaf a world, each insect an inexplicable compendium.

JOHANN CASPAR LAVATER

Physiognomy

Tags: Johann Caspar Lavater


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"