by archanasr {flickr break}

The springtime trees of Chitra were perfect as a scene imagined from a storybook. They grew short and tall, thin and spreading, leafy and open. Their leaves were grass- green, blue- green, yellow- green, dark green, light green, crimson and brown and yellow, glossy and dull, smooth and sticky, round and pointed like fingers, fluttering and still. The barks of the trees were rough and smooth and furry, grey and white and green and black, cool and warm. The flowers grew in bunches or grew apart; they were red, yellow, white, pink and honey- colored; they were green and blue and purple and orange and silver and gold and lavender; they were large and small. All among the trees were tapering vines and slender creepers, rushes and canes and reeds, ferns and shrubs and grasses and orchids and bamboo and moss.
—William Buck, Ramayana, 2000.

by Atli Harðarson

Right next to the pond were patches of dark green succulent leaves, dark red at their edges. Where the green shaded into red was a color he couldn’t name, a dark lustrous brown stuffed somehow with both its constituent colors. He would have to call up a color chart soon, it seemed: lately when looking around outdoors he found that a color chart came in handy about once a minute. Waxy almost- white flowers were tucked under some these bicolored leaves. Farther on lay some tangles, red- stalked, green- needled, like beached seaweed in miniature. Again that intermixture of red and green, right there in nature staring at him.
—Kim Stanley Robinson, Blue Mars, 1993.

by mharrsch

Her evening gown was of an ivory- colored taffeta. The billowing skirt did justice to the effect of the stiff, cold, voluminous taffeta, on which the grain of shifting light flowed and opened up its quiet, silver, dead, long, slender eyes. Color was provided by a cattleya pinned to her bodice. The faint yellow, pink, and purple velum, surrounded by violet petals, imparted the coquetry and shyness peculiar to members of the orchid family. From her necklace of little Indian nuts strung on a yellow gold chain, from her loose lavender elbow- length gloves, from the orchid on her bodice, the fresh odor of perfume like the air after a rain wafted its charms.
—Yukio Mishima, Forbidden Colors, 1953. Translated from the Japanese by Alfred H. Marks, 1968.

by Alastair Dunning

Mr. Wonka was standing all alone just inside the open gates of the factory. / And what an exraordinary little man he was! / He had a black top hat on his head. / He wore a tail coat made of a beautiful plum- colored velvet. / His trousers were bottle green. / His gloves were pearly gray. / And in one hand he carried a fine gold- topped walking cane. / Covering his chin, there was a small neat pointed black beard — a goatee. And his eyes — his eyes were most marvelously bright. They seemed to be sparkling and twinkling at you all the time.
—Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, 1964.

by _marmota

That marvellous landscape of my dream — / Which no eye knows, nor ever will — / At moments, wide awake, I seem / To grasp, and it excites me still. . . .

Blue sheets of water, left and right, / Spread between quays of rose and green, / To the world’s end and out of sight, / And still expanded, though unseen.

Enchanted rivers, those — with jade / And jasper were their banks bedecked; / Enormous mirrors, dazzled, made / Dizzy by all they did reflect.

And many a Ganges, taciturn / And heedless, in the vaulted air, / Poured out of the treasure of its urn / Into a gulf of diamond there.

As architect, it tempted me / To tame the ocean at its source; / And this I did, — I made the sea / Under a jewelled culvert course.

And every colour, even black, / Became prismatic, polished, bright; / The liquid gave its glory back / Mounted in iridescent light.
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867), "Parisian Dream," translated by Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1936.

by gycingeniero

It is now one of those intensely golden sunsets which kindles the whole horizon into one blaze of glory, and makes the water another sky. The lake lay in rosy or golden streaks, save where white- winged vessels glided hither and thither, like so many spirits, and little golden stars twinkled through the glow, and looked down at themselves as they trembled in the water.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1852.

by ForthDude

It was a green sunset. The reds, the oranges, the purples which Amanda automatically associated with sunsets had been snuffed out in the soggy cloud pile, and the nearly invisible sun that sank — beyond the fields, sloughs, rock islands and tide flats — into Puget Sound, it looked like an unripe olive photographed through gauze.
—Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction, 1971.

by -Lori-

I sit on a purple bed, / Outside, the wall is red, / Thereby the apple hangs, / And the wasp, caught by the fangs, . . .

Gold wings across the sea! / Moonlight from tree to tree, / Sweet hair laid on my knee, / O, sweet knight, come to me!
—William Morris, "Golden Wings," 1858.

by mcsadden

Rahel took off her new fingers, and had her old finger- colored fingers back. Not yellow, not green, not blue, not red. Not yellow.
—Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things, 1998

by Batram

We found [mushrooms] in all shades of brown, yellow, and red, from velvet darks up to the most vivid orange scarlet. But most wonderful of all were the deep purple ones. Purple has always been to me the mystery color, the magician's color. All the mushrooms looked very wise and as if they could weave spells and incantations, but the purple ones were the Merlins of the wood.
—Una Hunt, Una Mary: The Inner Life of a Child, 1914.

by howlinhill

Big gray [moths] with reddish markings, pale blue- green, yellow with lavender, and red and yellow."

"What do you mean by 'red and yellow?'" asked the Bird Woman so quickly that the girl almost jumped.

"Not exactly red," explained Elnora, with tremulous voice. "A reddish, yellowish brown, with canary- coloured spots and gray lines on their wings."
—Gene Stratton-Porter, A Girl of the Limberlost, 1909.

by dominic_nwh

The sun came down through miles of leaves and got broken up like a pointillist painting, deep green and dapple shadows but brilliant light in a soaring deep green super- bower, a perpetual lime- green light, green- and- gold afternoon, stillness, perpendicular peace, wood- scented, with the cars going by on Route 84 just adding pneumatic sound effects, sheee- ooooooooo, like a gentle wind.
—Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, 1968

by Ryan Orr

Without the actual use of color or light, the English composer Arthur Bliss wrote ‘A Colour Symphony’ having four movements. Here Bliss sought to convey the musical and emotional impression of four colors.

‘I. Purple: The Colour of Amethysts, Pageantry, Royalty and Death.

II. Red: The Colour of Rubies, Wine, Revelry, Furnaces, Courage and Magic.

III. Blue: The Colour of Sapphires, Deep Water, Skies, Loyalty, and Melancholy.

IV. Green: The Colour of Emeralds, Hope, Youth, Joy, Spring and Victory.’

The symphony was written in 1922, first presented in Gloucester Cathedral, and revised by the composer in 1932.
—Tom Douglas Jones, The Art of Light and Color, 1972.

by elvissa

Some folks say that once in a while you’ll find a coral snake in there, he glistening magic in his yellow and vermillion stripes, lying there near your foot like a thing bewitched, the fatal spell of his fangs in his wonderful color: cute thing, pretty little yellow and vermillion snake. Those rattlers in the swamps are of wonderful coloration: white, black, yellow, orange, red, blue, in great diamonds. Not like desert rattlers, dry, dusty in color, but moist in color, refulgent in color.
—Julian Lee Rayford, Cottonmouth, 1941.

by jamieca

The whole room blazed with light — and not with light alone but with a thousand colours, with all the glories of some painted window; and upon the walls of his room and on the familiar furniture, the glow flamed back and seemed to flow again to its source, the little wooden box. For there upon a bed of soft wool lay the most splendid jewel, — a jewel such as Dyson had never dreamed of, and within it shone the blue of far skies, and the green of the sea by the shore, and the red of the ruby, and the deep violet rays, and in the middle of all it seemed aflame as if a fountain of fire rose up, and fell, and rose again with sparks like stars for drops.
—Arthur Machen, "The Inmost Light," found in the collection Masterpieces of Mystery, 1921.

by Eric Hamilton

Nonexistence contains existence. Love / encloses beauty. Brown flint and gray steel have orange candlelight in them. Inside / fear, safety. In the black pupil of the eye, many brilliancies.
—Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207–1273), from Paradox. The Soul of Rumi: A New Collection of Ecstatic Poems, translated by Coleman Barks, 2001.

Jonathan responds with a dialog between a Zen master and his disciple:

Disciple: Does the cold flint contain the warm flame, Master?
Master: Tiny, sleeping monks with disposable lighters.

by H Campos

King Death was a rare old fellow! / He sate where no sun could shine; / And he lifted his hand so yellow, / And poured out his coal- black wine / Hurrah! for the coal- black wine!
—Thomas Morton, The School of Reform; or, How to Rule a Husband, A Comedy in Five Acts, 1805. As quoted in Artist of Wonderland: the Life, Political Cartoons, and Illustrations of Tenniel by Frank Morris, 2005.

by -Nat

Around the pale- blue dome of the heavens a few pearl- colored clouds hung motionless, as though the wind had been withdrawn to other skies. Not a crimson leaf floated downward through the soft, silvery light that filled the atmosphere and created the sense of lonely, unimaginable spaces. This light overhung the far- rolling landscape of field and meadow and wood, crowning with faint radiance the remoter low- swelling hill- tops and deepening into dreamy half- shadows on their eastern slopes. Nearer, it fell in a white flake on an unstirred sheet of water which lay along the edge of a mass of sombre- hued woodland, and nearer still it touched to spring- like brilliancy a level, green meadow on the hither edge of the water, where a group of Durham cattle stood with reversed flanks near the gleaming trunks of some leafless sycamores. Still nearer, it caught the top of the brown foliage of a little bent oak- tree and burned it into a silvery flame. It lit on the back and the wings of a crow flying heavily in the path of its rays, and made his blackness as white as the breast of a swan. In the immediate foreground, it sparkled in minute gleams along the stalks of the coarse, dead weeds that fell away from the legs and the flanks of a white horse, and slanted across the face of the rider and through the ends of his gray hair, which straggled from beneath his soft black hat.
—James Lane Allen, "Two Gentlemen of Kentucky," originally published in The Century Magazine, April 1888.

by Stewart Leiwakabessy

Big diamonds, big blue diamonds, how they sparkle / But what can they do to warm your soul? / When you’re lonesome in the moonlight, and need some lovin’ / Big diamonds, big blue diamonds, are so cold.
—Earl J. Carson, "Big Blue Diamonds," first recorded by Little Willie John in 1962.

by aarthyr

Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning, and the first thing that I saw / Was the sun through yellow curtains, and a rainbow on the wall / Blue, red, green and gold to welcome you, crimson crystal beads to beckon

Oh, won't you stay / We'll put on the day / There's a sun show every second
—Joni Mitchell, "Chelsea Morning," 1969.