GRASS AND GREEN THINGS. 17 



How deliciously sleeps the grass in the moonlight, and how joyfully 

 it laughs in the radiance of the sun. There is no place which it will 

 not heautify. It climbs up the steep mountain passes which are 

 inaccessible to man, and forms ledges of green amid the rivings of 

 the crags : it leaps down between steep shelving precipices, and there 

 fastens its slender roots in the dry crevices which the earthquakes had 

 rent long ago, and into which the water trickles when the sunbeams 

 strike the hoary snows above. There it leaps and twines in the morn- 

 ing light, and flings its sweet, sweet laughing greenness to the sun ; 

 there it creeps and climbs about the mazes of the solitude, and 

 weaves its fairy tassels with the wind. It beautifies even that spot, and 

 spreads over the sightless visage of death and darkness the serene 

 beauty of a summer smile, flinging its green lustre on the bold 

 granite, and perfuming the lips of morning as she stoops from heaven 

 to kiss the green things of the earth. It makes a moist and yielding 

 carpet over the whole earth, on which the impetuous may pass with 

 hurried tread, or the feet of beauty linger. 



Then, too, there is the broad empire of fairy lore, of wood-sprites, 

 and fays, and dryads — the spiritual essences of green leaves and the 

 embodied voices of living nature. The fairies have dwelt in the 

 green ever since time was, and the grass has ever loved them so, that 

 wherever it was blessed with the light touch of their feet, it broke into 

 magic rings of holy ground, sanctified to their moonlight revels. 

 King Arthur still lives with the fairies in the grass, for they bore him 

 ofi" that he might never know the pangs of dying, but return again 

 and reign as grandly as before.* It was then that the poet fathers 

 sang their fairy songs, and the multitude, yet unchilled by science 

 and scepticism, reverenced each meadow and dark dell as the 

 especial home of fairy creatures : — 



In the olde dayes of King Artour, 



Of which thes Bretons spoken gret honour, 



All was the land fulfilled of faerie; 



The Elf-quene and hire jolie compaj'nie 



Danced full oft in naany a grene mede; 



This was the old opinion as I rede. 



Chaucer. 



The love of green things is so universal and indestructible a pas 

 sion of man's heart, that no spot of earth where verdure grows, be it 



* The Welsh bards have a myth to this effect. 

 c 



