“The anthropologists are busy, indeed, and ready to transport us back into the savage forest, where all human things…have their beginnings; but the seed never explains the flower.”

"Death with Dignity"
Lyrics, Carrie and Lowell (2015)

Lighthousekeeping (2004)

Rev. William Henry Foote, in "Cornstalk, the Shawanee Chief" in The Southern Literary Messenger Vol. 16, Issue 9, (September 1850) pp. 533-540
Context: All savages seem to us alike as the trees of the distant forest. Here and there one unites in his own person, all the excellencies, and becomes the favourable representative of the whole, the image of savage greatness, the one grand character in which all others are lost to history or observation. Cornstalk possessed all the elements of savage greatness, oratory, statesmanship and heroism, with beauty of person and strength of frame. In appearance he was majestic, in manners easy and winning. Of his oratory, Colonel Benjamin Wilson, Senr., an officer in Dunmore's army, in 1774, having heard the grand speech to Dunmore in Camp Charlotte, says — "I have heard the first orators in Virginia, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, but never have I heard one whose powers of delivery surpassed those of Cornstalk on that occasion." Of his statesmanship and bravery there is ample evidence both in the fact that he was chosen head of the Confederacy, and in the manner he conducted the war of 1774, and particularly by his directions of the battle at Point Pleasant.

"Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" (1955)
Context: Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago?
Where have all the flowers gone?
Young girls have picked them everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Epilogue
The Flower of Old Japan and Other Poems (1907), The Flower of Old Japan

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

The Flowers of the Forest. Note: This line appears in the “Flowers of the Forest,” part second, a later poem by Alison Cockburn. See Dyce’s “Specimens of British Poetesses,” p. 374.