One only leaf upon the top of a tree

 

One only leaf upon the top of a tree - the sole remaining leaf - danced round and round like a rag blown by the wind.
--
March 7, 1798
--
This was turned into Coleridge's Christabel, lines 48-50: There is not wind enough to twirl The one red leaf, the last of its clan, That dances as often as dance it can.

 

Dorothy Wordsworth

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If you gaze at a single leaf on a single tree, you do not see the other leaves. If you face the tree with no intention and do not fix your eyes on a single leaf, then you will see all the many leaves. If your mind is preoccupied with one leaf, you do not see the others, if you do not set your attention on one; you will see hundreds and thousands of leaves.

 

Yagyu Munenori

 

The leaf lives its appointed time, and does not struggle against the wind that carries it away. The leaf does no harm, and finally falls to nourish new leaves. So it should be with all men. And women.

 

Robert Jordan

 

There was one picture in particular which bothered him. It had begun with a leaf caught in the wind, and it became a tree; and the tree grew, sending out innumerable branches, and thrusting out the most fantastic roots.

 

J. R. R. Tolkien

 

If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf,
Our lives would grow together
In sad or singing weather,
Blown fields or flowerful closes,
Green pasture or gray grief;
If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf.

 

Algernon Charles Swinburne

 

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.

 

Robert Frost