Grass

“ But here was a vast expanse in which no tree, nor stump, nor stone was visible. Naught met the eye but the tall grass, waving in the breeze, bending, rising, and rolling to and fro like the waves of the ocean after a tempest; and this grassy surface interspersed with wild flowers of every colour, hue and form. ”

“ A broken arch or two, a few worn stones
Piled one upon another, and for paving
Uneven fragments with tall grass between:
Grass that is always green, winter and summer,
The grass that grows on long-forgotten graves. ”

“ Many a time I have traced streams of grass to their fresh fountains, where jets of tender foliage and bubbles of tinted flowers welled up from dark, rich earth, and flowed away, with a velvet rustle and a ripple like blown floss, to break and recoil and eddy against the dark shadows of a distant grove. ”

“ Nothing in Nature could be more beautiful than this grass. The whole of the surface of the earth was like a gold and green sea, on which millions of flowers of different colours were sprinkled. Through the high and delicate stems of grass the cornflowers twinkled—light blue, dark blue, and lilac. ”

“ The land covered with beautiful grass, with sheep lying about upon it, as fat as hogs stretched out sleeping in a stye. Everything grows well here: earth without a stone so big as a pin's head; grass as thick as it can grow on the ground. ”

“ The trees were just as nature made them, and so was the grass, which in places was lying long, dry and withered under the sun, weeds creeping up in damp places, and the gravel of the pathway scattered upon the verges. ”

“ THE grass so little has to do, —
A sphere of simple green,
With only butterflies to brood,
And bees to entertain,
And stir all day to pretty tunes
The breezes fetch along,
And hold the sunshine in its lap
And bow to everything ”

“ Grasses are becoming tall and cane-like and do not cover the ground with their leaves as at the North. Strange plants are crowding about me now. Scarce a familiar face appears among all the flowers of the day’s walk.
September 29. To-day I met a magnificent grass, ten or twelve feet in stature, with a superb panicle of glossy purple flowers. Its leaves, too, are of princely mould and dimensions. Its home is in sunny meadows and along the wet borders of slow streams and swamps. It seems to be fully aware of its high rank, and waves with the grace and solemn majesty of a mountain pine. ”

“ The invincible bunch grass, aroused from its lethargy by the magic touch of moisture, sent forth from its withered roots tender shoots of green that peeped shyly from the mass of sun parched stalks that, unable to withstand the summer's heat, had fallen helplessly back, thus forming a shield for their parent turf. ”

“ Just as soon as the water was forced to run down hill, the dry land appeared, and the grass began to grow, and the mantles of green were thrown over the shoulders of the hills, and the trees laughed into bud and blossom, and the branches were laden with fruit. ”

“ But the grass is still green, and the trees thick with foliage, the fields neatly ploughed and tilled and cultivated, with here and there a staring notice planted on the edge of a field, where the long, straight drills are sprinkled with budding green—'Crops sown. ”

“ It could not have been for the wind passing softly over the grass, nor the shadows creeping slowly to the east, nor the dry grasses that whispered in the wind, rubbing their little blades and sighing gently. ”

“ The grass is shaven every week; this, of course, produces a fresh bright tint, and to your tread it feels like the richer bed of moss you ever set your foot upon. I fear we never can have the abundance and variety of flowers they have here. ”

“ When the spring floods have passed and the warm rains follow through lengthening days of sun, grass and flowers arise with magic swiftness from a wonderfully fertile soil. Trees bud and leaf; berries form hard on the blossoming. ”

“ The grass for the most part is greyish-green, more grey than green where it has not been mown, but on the rocky and broken ground there is a colour like that of an emerald, and the low sun when it comes out throws from the projections on the hillside long and beautifully shaped shadows. ”

“ No person who has not been exiled to the tropics for many years, where the grass is of wire, or of sharp swords, can know the pathetic joy we feel who come into our own again of velvet lawns and smooth pastures and tasselled meadows. ”

“ The fields are all covered with very vivid green grass and corn coming up, and sometimes when there is a purple thunder-cloud across half the sky and all these colours in the sun, wet with rain, shining against it, the effect is simply like a scene cut out of glittering metals. ”

“ While the grass is fresh, the earth is in its vigor. The greenness of the grass is the best symptom or evidence of the earth’s youth or health. Perhaps it will be found that when the grass ceases to be fresh and green, or after June, the birds have ceased to sing, and that the fireflies, too, no longer in myriads sparkle in the meadows. Perhaps a history of the year would be a history of the grass, or of a leaf, regarding the grass-blades as leaves, for it is equally true that the leaves soon lose their freshness and soundness, and become the prey of insects and of drought. ”

“ Then, as we pass over plain, and valley, and mountain, we find things creeping innumerable, both great and small, hidden in the moss or the thick grass, rolled up in the leaves, boring into the stems and trunks of trees, eating their way underground or into even the strongest rock. ”

“ Scarcely any vegetable growth is so plentiful as grass, which has been used in that sense by the highest of all authorities, “which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven.” Grass forces its way everywhere—not only in cultivated grounds, but in the wildest of lands, where there is scarcely any nurture for it. Even among the habitations of mankind the grass will have its way, and clothes deserted housetops with verdure, and forces itself between the stones that pave neglected streets. ”

“ The grass is still brown, the trees barren, no ambitious floweret thrusts its head above the bosom of its mother earth,—except, indeed, those "floures white and rede, such as men callen daisies," that always seem to beam upon the world, no matter how the wind blows. ”

“ Exuberant grass replenishes all my fields, the best representative of our wealth; in the middle of that tract I have cut a ditch eight feet wide, the banks of which nature adorns every spring with the wild salendine, and other flowering weeds, which on these luxuriant grounds shoot up to a great height. ”

“ Imagine a vast and gently-swelling pasture of the brightest green grass, stretching away from you on every side, behind, toward these hills I have described, in all other directions, to a belt of tall trees, all growing up with noble proportions, from the generous soil. ”

“ And often, lounging with friends in the soft grass Beside a river of water, underneath A big tree's branches, merrily they'd refresh Their frames, with no vast outlay—most of all If the weather were smiling and the times of the year Were painting the green of the grass around with flowers. ”

“ The grass is still verdant on the hills and in the valleys; [Pg 192] the foliage of the trees is as dense as ever, and as green; the flowers are abundant along the margin of the river, and in the hedge-rows, and deep among the woods; the days, too, are as fervid as they were a month ago; and yet in every breath of wind and in every beam of sunshine there is an autumnal influence. I know not how to describe it. Methinks there is a sort of coolness amid all the heat, and a mildness in the brightest of the sunshine. ”

“ So all the little dogs ran down into the meadow where the grass was growing, and they said, “Oh, grass, grass! what makes you so green? Pray tell us, that we may all get green tails, like the tail of the strange little dog.” ”

“ The bright short grass lay all one way like brushed hair. Every shrub in the garden tugged at its roots like a dog at the collar, and strained every leaping leaf after the hunting and exterminating element. ”

“ The sunshine is beating fiercely down upon the groups scattered over the center of the lawn; but here under the trees the grass is flecked with cool shadows, and the two catch the breeze—such as it is—that comes from the river. ”

“ The appearance of the first green grass, the unfolding of the pale yellowish leaves on the trees, the budding of the earliest wildflowers and the cloudy pink and white of the orchards, were as successive signals from a new world. ”

“ Perhaps a more simple illustration is the appearance of a wheat field or a lawn on a windy day; the wind sweeps over the grass, producing in the grass a wave like the water waves of the ocean, but the blades of grass do not move from their accustomed place in the ground, held fast as they are by their roots. ”

“ Looking down when I walked in the fields the young spring grass could be seen thrusting up its blades among the old and dead, but at a distance of a few yards these delicate living green threads were invisible. ”

“ One has been caught by the camera, perched upon the down of a mullein leaf, as shown in the photographic illustration.
During still nights in early spring and fall, when there are no disturbing winds, the water molecules or dewdrops in countless numbers form one upon another, all night long, and settle upon blades of grass and all growing plants, and in the morning sunshine dance and sparkle in strings of scintillating diamonds from every pasture and hedge row.
18
The sharp-pointed grasses collect the dew very copiously and in a most interesting manner. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Sometimes in such arid dry countries, a small spring of water will form around itself a refreshing oasis of greenery surrounded everywhere by dreary thorn-scrub or monotonous sand. All the plants in such a spot have their own special work to do: the graceful trees which shade the spring, the green mosses on the stones, the fresh grass and bright flowers or waving reeds, are all associated in a common work. They protect and shelter each other; their dead leaves are used to form soil; their roots explore and break up the ground. ”

“ The grass never pushes itself up in little, untimely blades through the winter, thus leaving our lawns and fields full of bare patches in the warmer season. The flowers that close at night do not half close, folding some petals and letting others stay wide open. ”

“ Grass, gras, n. common herbage: an order of plants (Gramineæ) , the most important in the whole vegetable kingdom, with long, narrow leaves and tubular stem, including wheat, rye, oats, rice, millet, and all those which supply food for nearly all graminivorous animals: short for asparagus—sparrow-grass: time of grass, spring or summer: the surface of a mine.—v.t. to cover with grass: to feed with grass: to bring to the grass or ground, as a bird or a fish— (various perennial fodder grasses are timothy, fox-tail, cock's-foot, and the fescue grasses, Italian rye-grass, &c.) ”

“ When we speak of grass we generally mean [Pg 29] one thing, the small slim green herb which carpets the familiar earth. But there are many grasses, from the smooth close-set herb of our lawns or the sheep-nibbled downy greenness of mountain-pastures, to the forest-like groves which sway in the torrid winds of the south. Of these alone much might be written. I prefer, however, that name I have placed at the head of this article—taken, if I remember rightly, from a poem by the Gaelic mountain-poet, Duncan Ban Macintyre—and used in the sense of the original. ”

“ The grass that overspread the ground, the branches and foliage of the trees, all shone with that reddish and moveable light which varies in its intensity at the will of the animal by which it is produced. ”

“ Every traveller remarks how clear of grass is the ground which they shadow ; but none explain whether the soil becomes barren by imbibing the acid juice of the fallen fruit, or whether it results from some deleterious emanation. ”

“ In speaking of grasses, we are apt to think only of the grass in the meadows, which is the food for our horses and cattle; but there are other kinds of grasses which are just as important to man as the grass of the meadow is to the beast. These are oats, rye, barley, wheat, corn, and others, all of which belong to the grass family.
Perhaps it appears strange to you to hear wheat and corn called grass, and you ask how can that be.
In the first place, all plants that have the same general form and method of growth, belong to the same family. ”

“ When the young grass throws up its leaves into the air, from which it derives so much of its nourishment, it throws down its roots into the soil in quest of food of another kind. The leaves may be mown or cropped by animals, and carried off the field, but the roots remain in the soil, and, as they die, gradually fill its upper part with vegetable matter. ”

“ Does the grass look ragged and unsightly? No, because I think that it is cut lightly with a scythe after the spring bulbs are gone and that the patient woman, whose life the garden is, keeps the tallest seeded grasses hand trimmed from between the lily stalks! ”

“ The supplication for grass and leaves and water reminds us that the herdsman no less than the husbandman depends ultimately on vegetation and rain; so that the same divine powers which cover the fields of the one with yellow corn may be conceived to carpet the meadows of the other with green grass, and to diversify them with pools and rivers for the refreshment of the thirsty cattle. ”