A Moonrise
The heavy mountains, lying huge and dim,
With uncouth outline breaking heaven’s brim;
And while I watched and waited, o’er them soon,
Cloudy, enormous, spectral, rose the moon.
Their Grass! — A Protest From California
They say we have no grass!
To hear them talk
You’d think that grass could walk
And was their bosom friend,—no day to pass
Between them and their grass.
“No grass!” they say who live
Where hot bricks give
The hot stones all their heat and back again,
—
A baking hell for men.
“O, but,” they haste to say, “we have our parks,
Where fat policemen check the children’s larks;
And sign to sign repeats as in a glass,
‘Keep off the grass!’
We have our cities’ parks and grass, you see!”
Well—so have we!
But ’tis the country that they sing of most. “Alas,”
They sing, “for our wide acres of soft grass!—
To please us living and to hide us dead—”
You’d think Walt Whitman’s first was all they read!
You’d think they all went out upon the quiet
Nebuchadnezzar to outdo in diet!
You’d think they found no other green thing fair,
Even its seed an honor in their hair!
You’d think they had this bliss the whole year round,—
Evergreen grass!—and we, ploughed ground!
But come now, how does earth’s pet plumage grow
Under your snow?
Is your beloved grass as softly nice
When packed in ice?
For six long months you live beneath a blight,—
No grass in sight.
You bear up bravely. And not only that,
But leave your grass and travel; and thereat
We marvel deeply, with slow western mind,
Wondering within us what these people find
Among our common oranges and palms
To tear them from the well-remembered charms
Of their dear vegetable. But still they come,
Frost-bitten invalids! to our bright home,
And chide our grasslessness! Until we say,
“But if you hate it so, why come? Why stay?
Just go away!
Go to—your grass!”