AMONG THE GRASSES 



WHEN the grass begins to sprout spring has come. When 

 the grass begins to wave it is summer. In winter the grass 

 seems scarcely to hide the earth and keep off the barren- 

 ness of the stony lifeless framework of the world. In 

 spring the soft greenness seems to announce the creation of 

 life out of matter. In a summer hay-field the richness and 

 fullness of the living principle are firmly established for all 

 time. A hay-field is exuberant of the vigour of growth. 

 You might think of it, as the mice and daddy-longlegs and 

 innumerable moths and spiders must regard it, as a great 

 forest undergrowth that has come up in a flash. The insects 

 hum over it in flocks, like pigeons over a grove. The thou- 

 sand shapes and colours of the grass-heads almost touch the 

 boughs of trees, which had looked through the winter like 

 umbrellas. The underspace is gone, as if, might one say, 

 the giant trees had waded in up to the hips. Pathways have 

 disappeared. A tumultuous surface of many colours varies 

 its infinite variety by 'shifting the sun anew' where the 

 wind swings and sways the bents. It is opening an eye of 

 the imagination to watch this luxuriance of form and colour 

 directly from above. In such a hay-field the writer once 

 climbed along a curiously horizontal bough of a single elm, 



