quotations about leaves
Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.
MARTIN LUTHER
attributed, The Lutheran Witness, 1935
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
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
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
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
A chaplet of leaves crowns the victor.
VIRGIL
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
The rustling of the leaves is like a low hymn to nature.
JAMES ELLIS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Every leaf is a spacious plain; every line a flowing brook; every period a lofty mountain.
JAMES HERVEY
Meditations Among the Tombs
I love the chill October days, when the brown leaves lie thick and sodden underneath your feet.
JEROME K. JEROME
"Silhouettes"
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"
The fall of leaves is an emblem of the decline of life.
R. TREVOR
attributed, Day's Collacon
Where is the pride of Summer--the green prime--
The many, many leaves all twinkling?--three
On the mossed elm; three on the naked lime
Trembling--and one upon the old oak tree!
Where is the Dryad's immortality?
THOMAS HOOD
"Ode--Autumn"
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"
In the whisper of the leaves appears an interchange of love.
WILLIAM JONES
attributed, Day's Collacon
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"
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"
What if the leaves were to fall a-weeping, and say, "It will be so painful for us to be pulled from our stalks, when autumn comes?" Foolish fear! Summer goes, and autumn succeeds. The glory of death is upon the leaves; and the gentlest breeze that blows takes them softly and silently from the bough, and they float slowly down, like fiery sparks, upon the moss.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
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
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