I only recently read Sons and Lovers. I was thinking of that very book when I earlier referred to not being certain whether certain references were intentional or coincidental. I don't have to wonder any more.

Not sure why I didn't think of Birches. It crossed my mind, but I knocked it out of the way for some reason.

Mostly, I didn't care much for Leaves of Grass, but the passage quoted above is one of the best one.


Shakespeare's Sonnet 73 also uses the leaf metaphor
http://
http://www.cswnet.com/~mgoad/html/shakespeare__william_-_sonnet_73.htm

"That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day .... "


One my all time favorites is Gerard Manley Hopkins' Spring and fall to a young child.

http://
http://www.cswnet.com/~mgoad/html/hopkins__gerard_manley_-_spring_and_fall.htm


"Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you? ..."




k