Each day and every day,
for years and years, the city folk swarmed over the Piedmont Hills,
and only here and there did the genius of the race survive in the
form of miserable little flowers, close-clinging and quick-blooming,
like children of the slums dragged hastily and precariously through
youth to a shrivelled and futile maturity.
On the other hand, the poppies had prospered in my field; and not
only had they been sheltered from the barbarians, but also from the
birds. Long ago the field was sown in wheat, which went to seed
unharvested each year, and in the cool depths of which the poppy
seeds were hidden from the keen-eyed songsters. And further,
climbing after the sun through the wheat stalks, the poppies grew
taller and taller and more royal even than the primordial ones of the
open.
So the city folk, gazing from the bare hills to my blazing, burning
field, were sorely tempted, and, it must be told, as sorely fell.
But no sorer was their fall than that of my beloved poppies.
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