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:
Ivan Shishkin, Willows Lit Up By the Sun
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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.
