that you can only find by parting the heavier growth around them;
hundreds and hundreds, thousands and thousands. The kingly poppies on the
dry summit of the mound take no heed of these, the populace, their
subjects so numerous they cannot be numbered. A barren race they are, the
proud poppies, lords of the July field, taking no deep root, but raising
up a brilliant blazon of scarlet heraldry out of nothing. They are
useless, they are bitter, they are allied to sleep and poison and
everlasting night; yet they are forgiven because they are not
commonplace. Nothing, no abundance of them, can ever make the poppies
commonplace. There is genius in them, the genius of colour, and they are
saved. Even when they take the room of the corn we must admire them. The
mighty multitude of nations, the millions and millions of the grass
stretching away in intertangled ranks, through pasture and mead from
shore to shore, have no kinship with these their lords. The ruler is
always a foreigner. 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