“The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet black bough.”

“Where there's no stop and go
a thought may wet your face,
a breath arrest your stare.”

Nathaniel Tarn (1928) American poet, essayist, anthropologist, and translator

“Kiss me as if you made believe
You were not sure, this eve,
How my face, your flower, had pursed
It's petals up.”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

“Now dig my grave
Beneath the bay willows' boughs
And with blackness cover it over again,
There for evermore
Go from my domain:
I wish to slumber in peace.”

Aleksis Kivi (1834–1872) Finnish writer

“Life is a stream
On which we strew
Petal by petal the flower of our heart.”

Amy Lowell (1874–1925) US writer

“A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

“She picks up the baby and contemplates the Bonsai-bush, and, as we watch, in the growing half-dark, the Bonsai-bush flowers. On the black-and-white film, the thousands of flower-petals blush a deep red.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

“Father remembered the wild pigeons crowding
Beech groves, mast-rich. The flutter in boughs, the cloud
Darkening all, a hurricane circling and surging.
Eye lost count, ear could not measure sound.
Mind hurled measureless with them, feathered the sky.”

Donald Davidson (1893–1968) American poet, essayist, critic and author

“Runes, runes, runes… Runes. An inverted Algiz rune. The caption next to it said “Chernobog.” The Black God. Right. Of course, it wouldn’t be Chernobog, God of Morning Dew on the Rose Petals, but a woman could always hope.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

“His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate'er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Village Blacksmith