_September 19th._
We have artists who give themselves to specialties. One delights to
know fruits. Another loves architecture, or landscape, or figures, or
animals, or grasses and flowers. Now it has always seemed strange that
the noblest of all grasses, maize, or Indian corn, has never found an
enthusiastic lover. It has been painted often, but never yet
interpreted. No one has done by it what has been done by the lily, the
rose, the convolvulus.
And yet, where shall we find any union of strength and grace more
perfect among herbaceous plants? The jointed stem, robust and stiff,
gives off at each articulation the most gracefully curved
sword-leaves, which diminish in length as the plant goes up to its
fimbriated top, forming a symmetrical whole not to be equalled among
field plants.
If one will wander along the edges of a cornfield, he will often see
an exquisite picture, such as Nature loves to make. The wild
convolvulus, which often fills the fence corners, has crept out of the
grass into the furrow and twined around the corn, climbing to its very
top, and, having power yet to grow, returns upon itself and fashions
festoons of exquisite leaves and white blossoms, which hang down in
every negligent form of beauty. Other vines too, besides the
convolvulus, try their arts, and none fail; but none succeed so
charmingly as this queen of twining vines.
A specialist might devote himself to corn without fear of exhausting
the subject. Of all the grains it is the true type of republicanism.
It knows how to live in the community without losing its
individuality. The smaller grains—wheat, barley, and such like—produce
their effects only in masses. Individual stalks are quite
insignificant. It is the community, and not the individual, that is
beautiful. But a field of corn does not swallow up in itself the stems
which form its mass. Every plant yet retains it nobility. If corn is
sown so thickly that it cannot find room for development, the whole
degenerates into mere grass, and loses its proper force and beauty.
But the husbandman has found out what rulers yet but slowly learn, and
reluctantly,—that the force and beauty of the whole is to be sought in
the development and strength of each single plant. Individuality and
community are not only compatible, but each is the indispensable
factor of the other.
Or, turn the subject in another light. Each stalk of corn is a father
and mother. It does not live for itself. When it hastens on in the hot
days of July, it is not its own beauty that it seeks. It takes that on
the way to a higher end. In the cool juices of that polished stem
glows the sacred fire of parentage. The arched and rustling leaves
borrow of the sun and air food for the coming brood. No sooner does
the tassel break forth at the top, than out peer the infant ears
nestling at the side of the noble stem. Nor does the parent blossom
into its final beauty until the exquisite silk hangs from the nascent
ears of corn to feed upon the parent’s life, and in that find its own.
No sooner do the new-born kernels swell, than the parent bequeaths
itself and all its inward stores to its offspring. The long leaves
swing idly in the air, as things that have nothing more to do. Every
day the winds evoke a shriller sound from their motions. When the cob
has covered itself with golden kernels, rich and ripe, the parent
dies,—dies mourning sadly, shall we think? What though it shall live a
hundred-fold in its children? All memory or consciousness will be
gone. It has spent its life and beauty for others. But how strong, how
fresh, how full, how beautiful its life, while doing its appointed
work! How little does it really care to live when the end of living is
accomplished! It did the work at hand, and drew all its beauty from
that doing, then took its place in the great economy of nature,
falling back to nothing.
With such thoughts men looked upon the fields thousands of years ago,
and sighed, “As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the
field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is
gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.”
It was thousands of years afterward that one said, “As we have borne
the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the
heavenly…. Death is swallowed up in victory.”
The grass of the field may image forth the secular side of human life,
but it can go no further than the grave. Beyond that it cannot point.
Only one garden ever was that set forth the sure hope of immortality.
“In the place where He was crucified, there was a garden…. There laid
they Jesus.”