Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.
poem by Robert Frost
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English Flowers
YE have been bought
With an immortal price,
O, windflowers quick as thought
Of love in solitude,
And daffodils, the year's young sacrifice
When summer's on the wood.
In no forgetful hour
Through the wind-trodden gold,
I follow the springs dower
Of leaf and sallow spray,
Men gave the flower of life that I might hold
Blossom and leaf to-day.
poem by Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall
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Fall to Earth
The stubborn little Maple leaf
held on when all its fellows fled.
They carpeting the ground beneath
a vast lushscape of gold and red.
Leaf held on through wind and rain,
the last survivor of its race.
Leaf held on past Turkey day
maintaining there its pride of place.
Then Leaf grew lonely, I suppose-
Like the summer's final rose.
Leaf envied then the flakes of snow
Who fluttered past to their repose.
Then, just as winter came to call,
Leaf felt a tug and then a snap.
Flying, tumbling on the winds
Fall to Earth. Fade to black.
poem by John F. McCullagh
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The Gardener
WITHIN this garden space are set
Sweet mignonette and violet,
Sunk in rich mould; at dawn and night
Their leaves dew-wet.
Who set them in the kindly loam
Lies buried 'neath the clover-foam
Of alien meadows, far away
From his loved home.
If it be glory thus to pass
For Honour's sake, and 'neath the grass
Red-wounded lie, then he, in truth,
Great glory has.
Yet, blossoms that he loved and set! —
Sweet mignonette, sweet violet —
Not Honour's self, nor Glory's crown,
Can stay regret.
'Twixt bud of leaf and fall of leaf,
Why should Fate in an hour so brief
Wreck flower and flower, and nurse alone
The cypress — Grief?
He is not gone — not all of him;
For trees have memories; leaf and limb
Shall breathe his name, and grateful flowers
At twilight dim.
For like these blooms, he left behind
Some fragrance, subtle and refined —
A memoried sweetness that shall haunt
Tree, flower and wind.
poem by Roderic Quinn
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Dear women!
Autumn Leaf!
I couldn’t love you as I did when you were green.
Summer Leaf!
I don’t shunt you as I would when you turn yellow.
Tender Leaf!
Reap while being green and stop expecting later.
30.08.2008
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
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Lonely Leaf
Lonely leaf
trembles
at the feeble moment
It's on the verge of falling
It's about to merge with limitless nature!
Air is guest to leaf once
now will become constant companion
Bond with tree
soon will be abandoned
The moment came
parting is always pain
fighting against time is invain
finally tree says farewell to the leaf
Now leaf realises boundless 'freedom'
It's floating like free bird
It is 'gone with the wind'
Leaf lost it's green colour
wearing pale colour
Colour hardly matters!
Leaf sings song of freedom
Bond with tree is bound
Feeling freedom is ecstasy abound
poem by Mula Veereswara Rao
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Elegy On The Death Of A Church Mouse
‘Colonel Gaddafi is dead; long live Gaddafi’,
- whose words those are?
don’t shoot, don’t shoot,
enough blood is spilled!
Gaddafi,
a leaf from the tree is dead;
leaf sprouts, leaf eats, leaf sleeps in the sky,
leaf waves the world in the cheer of palm,
makes no sand out of storm,
no beating themselves by the horse drain,
no hanging noose by the cock’s strain.
Leaf feeds the tree with green
when upon it’s tender face, the horrid-sun shine,
leaf, bearer of flower, bearer of seed,
never the taster of the sap from earth
till drops dead in the paleness of red,
‘don't shoot, don't shoot,
upon the sand is blood,
for the Colonel is dead’,
said, the tree,
and said, ‘Long live Gaddafi!
poem by Saranyan Bee
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Adonis
1.
Each of us like you
has died once,
has passed through drift of wood-leaves,
cracked and bent
and tortured and unbent
in the winter-frost,
the burnt into gold points,
lighted afresh,
crisp amber, scales of gold-leaf,
gold turned and re-welded
in the sun;
each of us like you
has died once,
each of us has crossed an old wood-path
and found the winter-leaves
so golden in the sun-fire
that even the live wood-flowers
were dark.
2.
Not the gold on the temple-front
where you stand
is as gold as this,
not the gold that fastens your sandals,
nor thee gold reft
through your chiselled locks,
is as gold as this last year's leaf,
not all the gold hammered and wrought
and beaten
on your lover's face.
brow and bare breast
is as golden as this:
each of us like you
has died once,
each of us like you
stands apart, like you
fit to be worshipped.
poem by Hilda Doolittle
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Sea Poppies
Amber husk
fluted with gold,
fruit on the sand
marked with a rich grain,
treasure
spilled near the shrub-pines
to bleach on the boulders:
your stalk has caught root
among wet pebbles
and drift flung by the sea
and grated shells
and split conch-shells.
Beautiful, wide-spread,
fire upon leaf,
what meadow yields
so fragrant a leaf
as your bright leaf?
poem by Hilda Doolittle
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Autumn Song
Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the heart feels a languid grief
Laid on it for a covering,
And how sleep seems a goodly thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
And how the swift beat of the brain
Falters because it is in vain,
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf
Knowest thou not? and how the chief
Of joys seems--not to suffer pain?
Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the soul feels like a dried sheaf
Bound up at length for harvesting,
And how death seems a comely thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
poem by Dante Alighieri
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Up In The Tree
What would you see, if I took you up
My little aerie-stair?
You would see the sky like a clear blue cup
Turned upside down in the air.
What would you do, up my aerie-stair
In my little nest on the tree?
With cry upon cry you would ripple the air
To get at what you would see.
And what would you reach in the top of the tree
To still your grasping grief?
Not a star would you clutch of all you would see,
You would gather just one green leaf.
But when you had lost your greedy grief,
Content to see from afar,
Your hand it would hold a withering leaf,
But your heart a shining star.
poem by George MacDonald
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Autumn Song
Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the heart feels a languid grief
Laid on it for a covering,
And how sleep seems a goodly thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
And how the swift beat of the brain
Falters because it is in vain,
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf
Knowest thou not? and how the chief
Of joys seems—not to suffer pain?
Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the soul feels like a dried sheaf
Bound up at length for harvesting,
And how death seems a comely thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1883)
Submitted by anonym
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Alchemy
I lift my heart as spring lifts up
A yellow daisy to the rain;
My heart will be a lovely cup
Altho' it holds but pain.
For I shall learn from flower and leaf
That color every drop they hold,
To change the lifeless wine of grief
To living gold.
poem by Sara Teasdale
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Evening
The light passes
from ridge to ridge,
from flower to flower—
the hepaticas, wide-spread
under the light
grow faint—
the petals reach inward,
the blue tips bend
toward the bluer heart
and the flowers are lost.
The cornel-buds are still white,
but shadows dart
from the cornel-roots—
black creeps from root to root,
each leaf
cuts another leaf on the grass,
shadow seeks shadow,
then both leaf
and leaf-shadow are lost.
poem by Hilda Doolittle
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The Leaf And The Tree And The Roots
if i had to write it again
then i had to, as i must
let you fully understand
the true nature of a vine
the way the leaf swerves
with the wind to give itself
to a fateful fall, the one that
completes its existence as
a leaf to a tree, a part of
a whole, the way it must
settle on the ground and
be with the worms and rot
and fulfills the cycle of its
short existence, and by then
it tells the roots, i am a leaf
i am back and you must now
eat everything in me so i can
be with the bark again so i
can be a leaf again to a tree
that holds me back
and then for another time
lets me fall again.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Daffodils
Ho! You there, selling daffodils along the windy street,
Poor drooping, dusty daffodils - but oh! so Summer sweet!
Green stems that stab with loveliness, rich petal-cups to hold
The wine of Spring to lips that cling like bees about their gold!
What price to you for daffodils? I'll give what price you please,
For light and love and memory lie leaf by leaf with these!
And if I bought all Sydney Town I could not hope to buy
The wealth you bring of everything that goes with open sky!
My money for your daffodils: why do you thank me so?
If I have paid a reckless price, take up my gift and go,
And from the golden garden beds where gold the sunbeams shine
Bring in more flowers to light the hours for lover-hearts like mine!
poem by William Henry Ogilvie
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Clover
Listen to clover song
First is hope
Two leaf is love
Three leaf is faith
and four leaf is luck
poem by Maria Sudibyo
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The Dog, Leaf And Worm
THERE is this dog
and it lives a dog's life
it's life has always been
all for the bone.
THERE is this leaf
true to its being a leaf
lives the short life
destined to fall
blown away
rot or burned.
There is this worm
it burrows itself
in that cold and damp
and then
returned to
its humus origin
BUT there is this fish that
i know
a gold fish that swims
against the tide of
the Yellow River
jumps higher
than the barrier
cliff and
transforms itself
into
a Red Dragon
THE dog, worm
and leaf
do not believe this
They all call me
a story teller.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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The Birth Of The Yellow Butterfly
on the gumamela leaf
the small cocoon hangs
there for days and
you wait for the
usual surprise in this
garden
it wriggles out and
pulls itself from
a tight house
it holds itself at the
tip of the leaf and
gets a fan from
the wind and then
stretches itself
and spreads its
wings and finally
flies away
how beautiful
to see
the birth of another
yellow butterfly
regally erect and
flutters from flower
to flower like she
were a princess
in her green castle
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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A Second Spring
The dew indiscriminately
wept for all things living and dead
on this early autumn morning.
Its cold droplets caressed the leaves
while lingering sap-starved leaf stems
clung precariously above
and each dying leaf shed teardrops
for and onto their fallen kind.
One by one they released their hold
falling silently, gracefully
in their final unique fashion:
Some swayed. Others pirouetted;
and many more, somersaulting
into their final resting place.
Sunbeams from an October star
spilt rippling puddles of warm light
on their multicolored remains
amid the vibrant wildflowers.
Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
Albert Camus
poem by Albert Ahearn
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The Magic Flower
THROUGH many days and many days
The seed of love lay hidden close;
We walked the dusty tiresome ways
Where never a leaf or blossom grows.
And in the darkness, all the while,
The little seed its heart uncurled,
And we by many a weary mile
Travelled towards it, round the world.
To the hid centre of the maze
At last we came, and there we found--
O happy day, O day of days!
--Twin seed-leaves breaking holy ground.
We dropped life's joys, a garnered sheaf,
And spell-bound watched, still hour by hour,
Magic on magic, leaf by leaf,
The unfolding of our love's white flower.
poem by Edith Nesbit
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