Writers have long drawn on saffron’s vivid, shimmering quality to evoke both natural beauty and rich symbolic meaning. In many texts the hue is portrayed as a glowing, warm yellow that transforms a scene—think of skies melting from deep rose into saffron light at dawn ([1],[2]) or landscapes bathed in a radiant saffron glow ([3],[4]). Saffron also colors garments and artifacts with a brilliance that conveys nobility and passion, as seen in characters donning saffron-tinted linen or vibrant saffron robes ([5],[6],[7],[8],[9],[10],[11],[12]). Whether used to describe a meteor’s flash of saffron light ([13],[14],[15]) or the delicate interplay of colors in nature ([16],[17]), the color saffron remains a potent literary device, imbuing both setting and character with a sense of warmth, vitality, and often, transcendence.
- He looked up at the saffron sky and snuffed the scorching air.
— from King Spruce, A Novel by Holman Day
- As they came to the outer door, the dawn was inexpressibly beautiful,—deep rose melting into saffron, beneath a tremulous morning star.
— from Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson
- An edge of serene light followed in the west a band of saffron radiance that widened until the cloud had vanished beyond the eastern peaks.
— from Mountain Blood: A Novel by Joseph Hergesheimer
- The sea ahead lightened up, became pale yellow, then warmed into saffron, and, when the sun rose, blazed into liquid gold.
— from The Lighthouse by R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne
- Her chemise is of very fine saffron-tinted linen.
— from Life on a Mediaeval Barony
A Picture of a Typical Feudal Community in the Thirteenth Century by William Stearns Davis
- [18] in their casques, the Salagram [18] round their neck; and having cased themselves in armour and put on the saffron robe, they bound the mor
— from Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, v. 2 of 3
or the Central and Western Rajput States of India by James Tod
- In battle, especially when they expected to die, the Rājpūts wore saffron-coloured robes as at a wedding.
— from The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Volume 4 by R. V. (Robert Vane) Russell
- Hymen begins to put off his saffron [464] robe: keep thy wife i’ the state of grace.
— from The Works of John Marston. Volume 1 by John Marston
- The sun had taken his plunge, but he had left behind him his robes of saffron and gold.
— from The Sky Pilot: A Tale of the Foothills by Ralph Connor
- The former, as well as his son, whom he had created Augustus, was dressed in Gallic trousers, 79 a saffron tunic, and a robe of purple.
— from History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 1 by Edward Gibbon
- No clansmen gathered round him, and no "Sassenach" soldiery rent away his saffron robe.
— from Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 20, August 1877 by Various
- [287] of those who had fallen in their ‘saffron robes,’ a sacrifice for her preservation.
— from Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, v. 1 of 3 by James Tod
- The gills are free, ventricose, crowded, saffron-yellow, to ferruginous.
— from The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise
Its Habitat and its Time of Growth by Miron Elisha Hard
- Electric white, shaded saffron yellow.
— from Roses and Rose Growing by Rose Georgina Kingsley
- Still, they don't catch up with him; he streaks it like some saffron meteor.
— from The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.)
- but not that gorgeous, hard Alexandrian blue—melted into peacock and cool saffron hues.
— from Visionaries by James Huneker
- In some lights the saffron prevails, in other lights vermilion, and yet in other lights the grays and blacks predominate.
— from Titan of Chasms: The Grand Canyon of Arizona by John Wesley Powell