Saturday, August 15, 2009

 

The Green Flag

Donald Culross Peattie, Flowering Earth (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1939; rpt. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), p. 6:
There are always some of us, not a few, in every generation, who go over wholly to the green flag. It is such a passionless fealty, so reticent a love, that neither do trumpets sound for it nor quarrels arise from it. Only, you will find that those who have pledged allegiance are happy about it in quiet.
Richard Wilbur, Green:
Tree-leaves which, till the growing season's done,
Change into wood the powers of the sun,

Take from that radiance only reds and blues.
Green is a color that they cannot use,

And so their rustling myriads are seen
To wear all summer an extraneous green,

A green with no apparent role, unless
To be the symbol of a great largesse

Which has no end, though autumns may revoke
That shade from yellowed ash and rusted oak.
Ivan Shishkin, Willows Lit Up By the Sun



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