The scarlet-dotted fly knows nothing of the names of the grasses that
grow here where the sward nears the sea, and thinking of him I have
decided not to wilfully seek to learn any more of their names either. My
big grass book I have left at home, and the dust is settling on the gold
of the binding. I have picked a handful this morning of which I know
nothing. I will sit here on the turf and the scarlet-dotted flies shall
pass over me, as if I too were but a grass. I will not think, I will be
unconscious, I will live.

Listen! that was the low sound of a summer wavelet striking the uncovered
rock over there beneath in the green sea. All things that are beautiful
are found by chance, like everything that is good. Here by me is a
praying-rug, just wide enough to kneel on, of the richest gold inwoven
with crimson. All the Sultans of the East never had such beauty as that
to kneel on. It is, indeed, too beautiful to kneel on, for the 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