1 All that inner darkness became a hall, leaf smelling, earth smelling of yellow light.
2 Here came the sun--an illimitable rapture of joy, embracing every flower, every leaf.
3 He loved flowers, and arranging them, and placing the green sword or heart shaped leaf that came, fitly, between them.
4 There," Isa mused, "would the dead leaf fall, when the leaves fall, on the water.
5 He forgot how she would have looked against vine leaf in a greenhouse.
6 And she was broad; she fairly filled the path, swaying slightly as she walked, and plucking a leaf here and there from the hedge.
7 Alone I linger, I pluck the bitter herb by the ruined wall, the churchyard wall, and press its sour, its sweet, its sour, long grey leaf, so, twixt thumb and finger.
8 "I'm William," he said, taking the furry leaf and pressing it between thumb and finger.
9 The future shadowed their present, like the sun coming through the many-veined transparent vine leaf; a criss-cross of lines making no pattern.
10 The lilies were shutting; the red lily, the white lily, each on its plate of leaf.
11 Now the jagged leaf at the corner suggested, by its contours, Europe.
12 In passing she stripped the bitter leaf that grew, as it happened, outside the nursery window.
13 I assure ye it made me shake like a driven leaf.
Return of the Native By Thomas HardyContext Highlight In BOOK 3: 2 The New Course Causes Disappointment 14 He appeared of a russet hue, not more distinguishable from the scene around him than the green caterpillar from the leaf it feeds on.
Return of the Native By Thomas HardyContext Highlight In BOOK 4: 5 The Journey across the Heath 15 When a leaf floated to the earth he turned his head, thinking it might be her foot-fall.
Return of the Native By Thomas HardyContext Highlight In BOOK 5: 6 Thomasin Argues with Her Cousin, and He Writes a Letter