Vineyards with purpling
clusters and happy folk gathering these in plaited baskets on sunny
afternoons. A herd of cattle with incurved horns hurrying from the
stable to the woods where there is running water and where
purple-topped weeds bend above the sleek grass. A fair glen with white
sheep. A dancing-place under the trees; girls and young men dancing,
their fingers on one another's wrists: a great company stands watching
the lovely dance of joy.
Such pageants appeared on the shield of Achilles as art; as pageants
of life they appear on the Earth Shield Kentucky. The metal-worker of
old wrought them upon the armor of the Greek warrior in tin and
silver, bronze and gold. The world-designer sets them to-day on the
throbbing land in nerve and blood, toil and delight and passion. But
there with the old things she mingles new things, with the never
changing the ever changing; for the old that remains always the new
and the new that perpetually becomes old--these Nature allots to man
as his two portions wherewith he must abide steadfast in what he is
and go upward or go downward through all that he is to become.
But of the many scenes which she in our time sets forth upon the
stately grassy Shield there is a single spectacle that she spreads
over the length and breadth of it once every year now as best liked by
the entire people; and this is both old and new.
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