And again:
“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.”
And again:
“In the morning they are like grass which groweth up;
In the morning it flourisheth and groweth up;
In the evening it is cut down, and withereth.”
Oh, faded couch on which I lean, here are witnesses enough of the highest authority of all, to establish a brotherhood between us! I look at these hands which can write and work, I look at these limbs which can rise and go, I consider the brain which can busily toil:—and from these I turn to regard the dry heap that once was living grass;—and I think how slack, and void of energy, and lifeless will these also lie, in the long swathes which ever and ever fall before the advancing mower, Death.
“‘Consider well,’ the voice replied,
‘His face, that two hours since hath died;
Wilt thou find passion, pain, or pride?’”
No; each lies in that especial long line of mown grass that we call his generation:
“Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun.”
Flesh, and grass: are they not akin? These ever-succeeding generations;—how the grass still grows after every mowing.