Grass: A Rumination

THE eye and the ear are inveterate hobbyists. This peculiarity in his perceptive faculties the observer of nature and the seasons must frequently have occasion to remark : one phase of growing life, one set of objects in the landscape, shall often so engage his attention as to render him comparatively dull to other impressions. The new season comes, clothing with wonder the whole woodland ; but, for some unassignable reason, the observer finds nothing so sanitary and pleasing to his eye as willow green ; or, among all the surprises of vernation, he has regard only toward the hickory’s richly colored buds, which seem to promise not mere leaves, but a blossom of royal dyes and dimensions; or, from among the various delicacies of vernal bloom in field and wood, his eye curiously singles out and visits with favor a flower with no more pretensions to beauty than the little pale starveling, plantain-leaved everlasting. “No doubt the blue and the yellow violets are abundant, but I happen to have seen only the white, fragrant kind, this spring,” remarked one who looked with a loving prejudice. I do not account for these prepossessions and partialities ; if I could account for them, I should understand why, during the season past, Nature’s great commoner, the Grass, should have spoken with such unusual eloquence, convincing me that never before had I seen half its graces and virtues. Something, then, I have lately learned regarding

(supposed indeed to have been lost with our earlier Intimations of Immortality), and I may venture to corroborate the orphic strain which bids us believe that

Being advised of this plotting and planning, it seemed possible to equal such foresight and sagacity by entertaining some speculations as to what poor man shall do when he is grass (if the road of this metempsychosis were traversable in both directions). That which all our lives we have under our feet is at length set above our heads, — the softly moving janitor, that follows us and shuts the gate opened for our mortal passing; the light touch soon removing all traces of the wound received by earth, when our sleeping chamber was delved. In fine, still weather you may lie close to the low gate, and, so lying, feel peace and comfort gliding in upon every sense ; but do not venture, in any form, to repeat the old prayer, “ Leeve moder, let me in! ” lest the grass should hear, and, understanding the mother’s sign, gather around, and quickly close over your repining humanity.

Plainly, the grass has its secrets; aud a certain slyness or evasiveness characterizes all its behavior. It trembles at the slightest solicitation of the breeze, yet is there no sound arising from its agitation ; herein it differs from the frank loquacity of the leaves of a tree. The stridulous gossip of the myriads that shelter among its blades only accentuates the silence of the grass. What busy traffic, what ecumenical gatherings, what cabals of the insect world, it could report! Probably no pageant in fairyland, could we obtain a pass into that jealous Chinese precinct, would be so well worth our admiration as would the hourly life of the inhabitants of this small plot of grass, when once we were inducted into its mysteries. The spirit of the greensward ! Of what were the Greek poets thinking when, having assigned a naiad to every stream and a dryad to every tree, they forgot to give the grass its deity ? If the goddess Ceres ever held this position, she has since forfeited it by her partiality towards the grain-bearing grasses, she having bestowed her name upon these ; whence cereals they still remain.

The grasses carry a free lance in all parts of the globe. In temperate climates alone are found those by nature fitted to unite in close, cæspitous communities; weavers, they, of the rich, seamless garment which Earth loves to have spread over her old shoulders. When turf is transplanted, with what aptness of brotherly love do root and blade hasten to knit themselves together, as though with the grass had originated the maxim, In union is strength ! If I lived in the builded desert called city, I would give myself the luxury of an oasis ; and if this were a scant one (perhaps a window-garden), and if limited to a single kind of vegetation, I would choose a strip of green turf; sure, so long as this flourished, that my connection with the country would not be wholly lost. If the city’s poor and depraved might but have the gospel as preached by the grass !

A family of the utmost benevolence is that of the Gramineæ. Out of its nearly four thousand known species only a single individual (darnel) sustains the charge of being unwholesome. The grasses are a royal society of food-purveyors, extending over the whole earth, and affording such plenitude and variety that man should not fare meagrely, even if confined for his sustenance to this one group of plants. Flour from the cereal, sugar from the cane, — strength and sweetness; with these left, what should forbid to the children of the earth their bread and treacle ? And not only man, but his serviceable dumb allies, the most patient, innocent, and intelligent of the brute creation, are nourished by the bounty of the grasses. In a different sense from that intended by the Hebrew prophet might it be affirmed that “ all flesh is grass,” all tissue and fibre remotely spun from this stout, durable thread. Some poor children living in a village suburb were asked what they had done at times when there had been no food in the house. “ Oh, we went out-doors and ate grass,” they replied, making no marvel of the case. Necessity, with a grain of salt (if necessity could afford the condiment), might perhaps manage a repast off the tenderer portions of the grass stem. A pity that Nebuchadnezzar left no record of the impressions gained during the time in which he “did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven.” While the rest of the Babylonians ate grass at a remove, by eating the ox that ate the grass, their king was getting down very close to first principles. If, by this simple gramineal diet, he did not acquire a curious ruminating knowledge which let him into the feelings and cogitations of the gentle grazing beasts, his neighbors, then the lesson of wisdom and humility must have been but imperfectly learned.

Whatever the etymological affinities of grass, cresco, and grow, the plant itself may be taken as the readiest and most universal type under which to represent nature’s crescent, unwearying energy. The year around, it cherishes good hopes, and continues to speak them, when other plant life is wholly silent. “ The trees look like winter, but the grass is like the spring.” It had hardy nurture from the beginning, the snow having cradled its seed ; for the farmer thinks no time more acceptable for sowing than early in the spring, after a light snowfall. Summer’s swarthy flame and that kind of white heat which we name frost may cut off growth above ground, but such is the recuperative power at the root that but one abundant rain or but one sunshine holiday is needed to start again the star y-pointing spear of the grass. There is no better economist of its resources than the grass.

Says Thoreau, in Walden, “ It grows as steadily as the rill oozes out of the ground. It is almost identical with that; for in the growing days of June, when the rills are dry, the grass blades are their channels, and from year to year the herds drink at this perennial green stream.” Although it is so dry to the touch, the veins of the grass are not scanted. A drop of moisture collects at the base of a culm, on its being pressed between thumb and finger ; and children, for sport, pit one such stem against another, to see which will carry away its own and the other’s glistening bead,— drops of the life-blood of the grass.

But here I have a good calendar to advise me whether the year runs high or low; to indicate not only the season, but the month also. It is March. I should not mistake the time, seeing those piebald locks which the earth wears: here a thread or tress of forward green, there a shock of the old dead gray or brown. It is April, — witnessed by the wild mob-rule conduct of the grass, its pushing emulousness, in which, for no plain reason, one blade outstrips by half its nearest neighbor, and no two blades show the same length. It is May (the Anglo-Saxon Month of Three Milkings), and the grass moves on, a banded strength, the inequalities it had in April having disappeared. Now, who are you, so light and expeditious, that you boast you ’ll not let the grass grow under your feet ? Let it! Take care, for it grows between your steps, silently mirthful, triumphant without vaunting. On a summer morning, with copious dew, the grass has its exultation. Innumerable caps of liquid hyaline I see, poised aloft on the points of innumerable bayonets. Some sudden, wild enthusiasm has seized these bladed myrmidons ; what this may be I have to fancy, and also what rallying word or note of huzza would best match with spirited sound a sight so thrilling.

June, the Month of Roses, Meadow Month, — which shall it be ? The latter, if respect be had to numbers ; since what are all the roses of all the world as compared with the infinite flowerage of the grasses, which this month fulfills? Think what bloom is represented by one panicle of June grass, or by one stately spire of timothy or herd’s grass, with its delicate purple anthers flung out each way, like so many pennons from the windows of a tower! To the flower of the grass was given a recondite loveliness, — prize only of the faithful, refined, and loving eye, patient to investigate. Fair Science takes her little learners out into the open, and there teaches them by a parable : “ Consider the lilies of the field.” “ But,” return the little learners, “ we can’t see any lilies.” Then says smiling Science, “ They are all around you; ” and, gathering a stalk of blossoming grass, or, yet better, of wheat, she proceeds to divulge in its obscure and curious inflorescence vanishing traces of an ancient lily-resembling type, from which the grasses have descended.¹ It appears that while one branch of a great botanical family rose to vie with Solomon (by their bright colors winning the admiration and friendly offices of the insect world), another branch of the family eschewed such ambitions, and obtained the wind as a lover. Science dissects the unremembering flower, and shows us by what crowding together of its parts and gradual suppressions the liliaceous form has been lost save to the nice eye of the specialist. Had not the grasses practiced humility, or had they not stooped to conquer, it might have come to pass that man had asked for bread and been given a lily.

In much the same way as he forecasts the profit he will have from the woolly flock does the farmer count upon the fleeces grown by his fields (whose shearing-time, also, is in June). There are hay-scales in his mind, and such calculation in his eye, that he can foretell with considerable accuracy and very definite cheer what will be the yield of this or that “ piece,” — whether a ton, ton and a half, or two tons to the acre.

Lovely and pleasant all its life, it follows that the grass rejoices in a fragrant memory. Whether curing for hay in the field, or already gathered, the “goodliness thereof” goes never to waste. I think sleeping on the haymow will yet be recommended as therapeutic for any that may be “ sick or melancholious; ” the breath of the hay being every whit as efficacious as that Chaucerian tree whose leaves were “ so very good and vertuous.” Needless to gather those special herbs so much esteemed as remedies, when the barn is full of more excellent simples that cure with their aroma.

You can tell the time of year by an inspection of the barns ; nor is it always necessary to see the interior. As you rode swiftly by one of these old harvest storehouses, you saw the setting sun shoot arrows of gold through the building from side to side between the warped boards. That was an evening in spring; now, in autumn, the garrison is quite impervious to all such archery, every chink and cranny being caulked with the hay, which reaches even to the high beam on which the swallows had their nests.

The yield of the summer meadows has not all been stored under roof. In the midst of the field where sunburnt Labor conquered with scythe, rake, and fork is raised a monument of the victory. The great cone of the haystack, rightly viewed, is no less interesting than are the pyramids themselves. If I mistake not, clear-seeing Morning “opes with haste her lids,” to gaze upon this record of human enterprise, lifted from the home plains.

Edith M. Thomas.