THE JULY GRASS. 39 



worthy to be thought of for a week and remembered for 

 a year. Slender grasses, branched round about with 

 slenderer boughs, each tipped with pollen and rising in 

 tiers cone-shaped — too delicate to grow tall — cluster at 

 the base of the mound. They dare not grow tall or the 

 wind would snap them. A great grass, stout and thick, 

 rises three feet by the hedge, with a head another foot 

 nearly, very green and strong and bold, lifting itself 

 right up to you ; you must say, ' What a fine grass ! ' 

 Grasses whose awns succeed each other alternately ; 

 grasses whose tops seem flattened ; others drooping over 

 the shorter blades beneath ; some that you can only find 

 by parting the heavier growth around them ; hundreds 

 and hundreds, thousands and thousands. The kingly 

 poppies on the dry summit of the mound take no heed 

 of these, the populace, their subjects so numerous they 

 cannot be numbered. 4 A barren race they are, the proud 

 poppies, lords of the July field, taking no deep root, but 

 raising up a brilliant blazon of scarlet heraldry out of 

 nothing. They are useless, they are bitter, they are 

 allied to sleep and poison and everlasting night ; yet 

 they are forgiven because they are not commonplace. 

 Nothing, no abundance of them, can ever make the 

 poppies commonplace. There is genius in them, the 

 genius of colour, and they are saved. Even when they 

 take the room of the corn we must admire them. The 

 mighty multitude of nations, the millions and millions 

 of the grass stretching away in intertangled ranks, 

 through pasture and mead from shore to shore, have no 

 kinship with these their lords. The ruler is always a 

 foreigner. From England to China the native born is 

 no king; the poppies are the Normans of the field. 

 One of these on the mound is very beautiful, a width of 

 petal, a clear silkiness of colour three shades higher thao 



