e 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 sunshine. You might pass by it in one stride, yet it is 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. 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 than the rest--it is almost dark with scarlet. I
wish I could do something more than gaze at all this scarlet and gold
and crimson and green, something more than see it, not ex