They are high-colored, like ripe grapes, and express a
maturity which the spring did not suggest. Only the August sun could
have thus burnished these culms and leaves. The farmer has long since
done his upland haying, and he will not condescend to bring his scythe
to where these slender wild grasses have at length flowered thinly; you
often see spaces of bare sand amid them. But I walk encouraged between
the tufts of Purple Wood-Grass, over the sandy fields, and along the
edge of the Shrub-Oaks, glad to recognize these simple contemporaries.
With thoughts cutting a broad swathe I "get" them, with horse-raking
thoughts I gather them into windrows. The fine-eared poet may hear the
whetting of my scythe. These two were almost the first grasses that I
learned to distinguish, for I had not known by how many friends I was
surrounded,--I had seen them simply as grasses standing. The purple of
their culms also excites me like that of the Poke-Weed stems.
Think what refuge there is for one, before August is over, from college
commencements and society that isolates! I can skulk amid the tufts of
Purple Wood-Grass on the borders of the "Great Fields." Wherever I walk
these afternoons, the Purple-Fingered Grass also stands like a
guide-board, and points my thoughts to more poetic paths than they have
lately travelled.
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