CERES\' RUNAWAY
One can hardly be dull possessing the pleasant imaginary picture of a
Municipality hot in chase of a wild crop--at least while the charming
quarry escapes, as it does in Rome. The Municipality does not exist that
would be nimble enough to overtake the Roman growth of green in the
high places of the city. It is true that there have been the famous
captures--those in the Colosseum, and in the Baths of Caracalla; moreover
a less conspicuous running to earth takes place on the Appian Way, in
some miles of the solitude of the Campagna, where men are employed in
weeding the roadside. They slowly uproot the grass and lay it on the
ancient stones--rows of little corpses--for sweeping up, as at Upper
Tooting; one wonders why. The governors of the city will not succeed in
making the Via Appia look busy, or its stripped stones suggestive of a
thriving commerce. Again, at the cemetery within the now torn and
shattered Aurelian wall by the Porta San Paolo, they are often mowing of
buttercups. "A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread," says
Shelley, whose child lies between Keats and the pyramid. But a couple
of active scythes are kept at work there summer and spring--not that the
grass is long, for it is much overtopped by the bee-orchis, but because
flowers are not to laugh within reach of the civic vigilance.