A friend shared the following tribute to grass a few days ago, knowing I love two things: 1.) careful, artistic composition and 2.) the peaceful allure of green pastures. I found it enchanting in simplicity and yet majestic, as if the author of another time grasped realities grown dim and overlooked with our modern age.
* * *
GRASS – A PANDRAMA IN WORDS (from The Kansas Magazine, 1892)
Grass is the forgiveness of nature – her constant benediction.
Fields trampled with battle, saturated with blood, torn with the ruts of
cannon, grow green again with grass, and carnage is forgotten. Streets abandoned by traffic become grass-grown like rural lanes, and
obliterated. Forests decay, harvests perish, flowers vanish, but grass
is immortal.
Beleaguered by the sullen hosts of winter, it withdraws
into the impregnable fortress of its subterranean vitality, and emerges
upon the first solicitation of spring. Sown by the winds, by wandering
birds, propagated by the subtle horticulture of the elements which are
its ministers and servants, it softens the rude outline of the world.
Its
tenacious fibres hold the earth in its place, and prevent its soluble
components from washing into the wasting sea. It invades the solitude
of deserts, climbs the inaccessible slopes and forbidding pinnacles of
mountains, modifies climates, and determines the history, character,
and destiny of nations. Unobtrusive and patient, it has immortal vigor
and aggression.
Banished from the thoroughfare and the field, it bides
its time to return, and when vigilance is relaxed, or the dynasty has
perished, it silently resumes the throne from which is has been
expelled, but which it never abdicates. It bears no blazonry or bloom
to charm the senses with fragrance or splendor, but its homely hue is
more enchanting than the lily or the rose. It yields no fruit in earth or
air, and yet should its harvest fail for a single year, famine would
depopulate the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment