Literary notes about Rust (AI summary)
Literary authors have long used the color “rust” to evoke a mood of faded grandeur and the passage of time. In some texts, “rust” appears as a vivid descriptor of natural and manmade decay—a field is depicted as “rust‑colored” and new yet dreadful in its earthen hue ([1]), while streaks of this reddish-brown tint break through the purity of snow ([2]). In other passages, objects bear the mark of time with hues of red and brown: an iron shoe-buckle crusted with “red rust” ([3]) and a little toy soldier described as “red with rust” ([4]). Elsewhere, the color deepens the atmosphere in poetic language, with instruments and banners characterized by “sickles dark with rust” ([5]) and “rust‑brown bandeaux” ([6]), or by natural contrasts where walls of rock are rendered “rust‑colored” ([7]) and meadows are painted “like rust upon the season’s gold” ([8]). This recurring use of “rust” as a color not only highlights the beauty in disrepair but also serves as a powerful metaphor for the inevitable effects of time and neglect.
- It lay, a rust-colored field, on the steep hillside just at the border of the town, and was new, raw, and dreadful.
— from A Volunteer Poilu by Henry Beston - 142 Stern pointed to faint, rust-colored streaks in the snow between the imprints of the bear’s foot pads.
— from Secret Mission to AlaskaSandy Steele Adventures #5 by Robert Leckie - I stooped, and there, sure enough, crusted with the red rust, there lay an iron shoe-buckle.
— from The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 21 by Robert Louis Stevenson - But sturdy and stanch he stands, And the little toy soldier is red with rust
— from Eugene Field, a Study in Heredity and Contradictions — Volume 2 by Slason Thompson - Such sharpen once more upon the whetstone their sickles dark with rust and cause their mattocks, foul with want of use, to shine as of old.
— from Claudian, volume 2 (of 2)With an English translation by Maurice Platnauer by Claudius Claudianus - The rust-brown bandeaux, ruffled by the pressure of her head upon the pillow, gleamed in the dying sunlight like a nimbus.
— from Mr. Wayt's Wife's Sister by Marion Harland - They are masked here and there by groups of trees and shrubs, whose fresh verdure is in happy contrast with the ragged walls of rust-colored rock.
— from The Usurper: An Episode in Japanese History by Judith Gautier - It was in the pathway of a broad meadow, deep with grass, wherein the red sorrel topped the yellow buttercup, like rust upon the season's gold.
— from Rhoda Fleming — Complete by George Meredith
