XIV 



The Courtship of the Corn 



WHEN mathematicians hold converse together their 

 speech is pure poetry. The same may be said of the 

 botanists and geneticists. Indeed, it would seem that the fur- 

 ther one advances toward the truths of being, the more is 

 knowledge suffused with a sempiternal beauty. 



Half-truths, like half-gods, tend to be ugly and obscene. 

 Veils and subterfuges hide the glory from eyes too fearful to 

 behold effulgence. Most of humanity has spent its time with 

 the timid prophet, cowering in the rock, conscious only of 

 the Lord's back parts. 



But the cool, impersonal laboratories of the scientists where 

 truth is invoked are the holiest of holies. There, the mere fact 

 that a thing IS is sufficient to make it reverence-inspiring. 



The English tongue, which has voiced the greatest poetry, 

 has no impassioned sonnet to place beside the courtship of the 

 corn. Not even Malory can summon a pair of lovers whose 

 desire for each other flames with the intensity of the male and 

 female elements of the maize. Year by year, and a billion bil- 

 lion times over, the greatest of all love stories is enacted in the 

 American cornfields. 



The corn enters proudly upon its courting. From the mo- 

 ment the first green blades prick the hills, the plants have 

 been preparing themselves for their great adventure. The 

 culms have grown tall and straight and strong, toward the 

 moment when each one of them shall lift the symbol of its 

 invincible maleness to the sun. As that day draws near, the 

 sheath which has wrapped the stamen through its adolescence 

 can no longer contain the urgent vigor within. It breaks. The 



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