quote · Legacy record
Those homelier wildflowers, which we call weeds; yellow japanned buttercups and star-disked dandelions, lying in the grass, like sparks that have leaped from the kindling sun of summer; the profuse daisy-like flower which whitens the fields, to the great disgust of liberal shepherds, yet seems fair to loving eyes, with its button-like mound of gold set round with milk-white rays; the tall-stemmed succory, setting its pale blue flowers aflame one after another; the red and white clovers; the broad, flat leaves of the plantain,—"the white man's foot," as the Indians called it;—those common growths which fling themselves to be crushed under our feet and our wheels, making themselves so cheap in this perpetual martyrdom that we forget, each of them is a ray of the divine beauty.
Those homelier wildflowers, which we call weeds; yellow japanned buttercups and star-disked dandelions, lying in the grass, like sparks that have leaped from the kindling sun of summer; the profuse daisy-like flower which whitens the fields, to the great disgust of liberal shepherds, yet seems fair to loving eyes, with its button-like mound of gold set round with milk-white rays; the tall-stemmed succory, setting its pale blue flowers aflame one after another; the red and white clovers; the broad, flat leaves of the plantain,—"the white man's foot," as the Indians called it;—those common growths which fling themselves to be crushed under our feet and our wheels, making themselves so cheap in this perpetual martyrdom that we forget, each of them is a ray of the divine beauty.
Approximate author period: c. 1809 AD · industrial
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- Author or tradition
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
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- Approximate author period: c. 1809 AD · industrial
documented author birth year (1809)
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken. - Recorded source
- The Optimist’s Good Morning (1911) (1911 AD)
Complete signed selection 195; printed byline: Oliver Wendell Holmes; Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1911; printed copyright 1907
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