It has been stealthy
in a good cause, and bold out of reach. It has been the most defiant
runaway, and the meekest lingerer. It has been universal, ready and
potential in every place, so that the happy country--village and field
alike--has been all grass, with mere exceptions.
And all this the grass does in spite of the ill-treatment it suffers at
the hands, and mowing-machines, and vestries of man. His ideal of grass
is growth that shall never be allowed to come to its flower and
completion. He proves this in his lawns. Not only does he cut the
coming grass-flower off by the stalk, but he does not allow the mere
leaf--the blade--to perfect itself. He will not have it a "blade" at
all; he cuts its top away as never sword or sabre was shaped. All the
beauty of a blade of grass is that the organic shape has the intention of
ending in a point. Surely no one at all aware of the beauty of lines
ought to be ignorant of the significance and grace of manifest intention,
which rules a living line from its beginning, even though the intention
be towards a point while the first spring of the line is towards an
opening curve.
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