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 exactly to drink it or inhale it,
but in some way to make it part of me that I might live it.
The July grasses must be looked for in corners and out-of-the-way places,
and not in the broad acres - the scythe has taken them there. By the
wayside on the banks of the lane, near the gateway - look, too, in
uninteresting places behind incomplete buildings on the mounds cast up
from abandoned foundations where speculation has been and gone. There
weeds that would not have found resting-place elsewhere grow unchecked,
and uncommon species and unusually large growths appear. Like everything
else that is looked for, they are found under unlikely conditions. At the
back of ponds, just inside the enclosure of woods, angles of corn-fields,
old quarries, that is where to find grasses, or by the sea in the
brackish marsh. Some of the finest of them grow by the mere road-side;
you may look for others up the lanes in the deep ruts, look too inside
the hollow trees by the stream.
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