38 ' FIELD AND YEDGEROW. 
living ; and if the sunshine were a hundred hours long, 
still it would not be long enough. No, never enough of 
sun and sliding shadows that come like a hand over ‘the 
table to lovingly reach our shoulder, never enough of the 
grass that smells sweet as a flower, not if we could live 
years and years equal in number to the tides. that have 
ebbed and flowed counting backwards four years to every 
day and night, backward still till we found out which 
came first, the night or the day. The scarlet-dotted fly 
knows nothing of the names of the grasses that grow 
here where the sward nears the sea, and thinking of him 
I have decided not to wilfully seek to learn any more of 
their names either. My big grass book I have left at 
home, and the dust is settling on the gold of the binding. 
I have picked a handful this morning of which I know 
nothing. I willsit here on the turf and the scarlet-dotted 
flies shall pass over me, as if I too were but a grass, I 
will not think, I will be unconscious, I will live. 
Listen | that was the low sound of a summer wavelet 
striking the uncovered rock over there beneath in the 
green sea. All things that are beautiful are found by 
chance, like everything that is good. Here by me is a 
praying-rug, just wide enough to kneel on, of the richest 
gold inwoven with crimson, All the Sultans of the East 
never had such beauty as that to kneelon. It is, indeed, . 
too beautiful to kneel on, for the life in these golden 
flowers must not be broken down even for that purpose. 
They must not be defaced, not a stem bent; it is more 
reverent not to kneel on them, for this carpet prays itself. 
I will sit by it and let it pray for me. It is so common, 
the bird’s-foot lotus, it grows everywhere; yet if I 
purposely searched for days I should not have found a 
plot like this, so rich, so golden, so glowing with sun- 
shine. You might pass by it in one stride, yet it is 
