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 Asszsz. 
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 
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