THE STORY OF A BLADE OE GRASS. 
19 
of wild flowers. Oil! breezy evenings, under orchard 
trees, where the grass makes a cushion on which the 
juicy pears may tumble unhurt; and oh! bright eyes, 
laughing cheeks, and lips made for kissing, how will you 
people the garden with angel faces, when the lawn has 
been rolled and swept, and every tint of earth and heaven 
has taken possession of the dazzling beds and borders. 
A garden without grass is no garden at all, but if there 
is not a single flower m it all the summer long, a patch 
of w T ell-kept turf may do its share to make you happy, 
and entice you to the sunshine and the healthy air. If 
any one created object is to be selected as a fit subject for 
the application to it of the immortal lines with which 
Endymion opens, none so fit as the grass, which is 
emphatically, “a thing of beauty, and a joy for ever.” 
VI. IT IS A FAVOURITE WITH THE BOETS. 
Chaucer, the morning star of English poetry, makes 
allusions to green things in a way which always evidences 
a thorough acquaintance with them. His “ Gras in the 
Grene Mead ” is not the accidental utterance of a mere 
maker of verses, but of an observer and lover of Nature. 
This same remark applies with equal force to Spenser and 
Shakspere, who may be classed with Chaucer as of the 
u Pre-Raphaelite ” school of poetic-word painting. Milton 
took more of an artist’s and scholar’s view of Nature 
than his great predecessors. His mind was not suffi¬ 
ciently of the Saxon order for a realistic view of Nature; 
to him the rural had higher claims than the rustic, and 
we do not get such fresh breezes and vivid breadths of 
greenness from his natural scenes and images as from the 
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