CHAPTER VII \ 



GRASSES 



" Praised be my Lord for our mother the earth, the which 

 doth sustain us, and keep us, and bringeth forth divers fruits, 

 and flowers of many colors and grass." Song of the Creatures, 

 by Francis of Assist. 



THE late Oliver Wendell Holmes, in one of the 

 most exquisite passages of all his work, has sug- 

 gested that homesick longings for earth may come 

 over unreasonable human nature even in the courts 

 of heaven itself, and that eyes may turn from all 

 the glory and the glow, with reminiscent craving 

 for the cool color and graceful billowing of blow- 

 ing grass, starred with daisies and with dew. 



To one who has seen a region, however beauti- 

 ful, which lacked grass, the sentences in which the 

 author has expressed his feeling come with pecu- 

 liar force. For no splendor of semi-tropic sun- 

 shine, no blue of water and sky, no grace of 



palms, can compensate to the landscape for the 



149 



