As the grass of the earth, thought of as the herb yielding seed, leads us to the place where our Lord commanded the multitude to sit down by companies upon the green grass; so the grass of the waters, thought of as sustaining itself among the waters of affliction, leads us to the place where a stem of it was put into our Lord’s hand for his sceptre; and in the crown of thorns, and the rod of reed, was foreshown the everlasting truth of the Christian ages⁠—that all glory was to be begun in suffering, and all power in humility.”

“There is a still deeper significance in the passage quoted, a little while ago, from Homer, describing Ulysses casting himself down on the rushes and the corngiving land at the river shore⁠—the rushes and corn being to him only good for rest and sustenance⁠—when we compare it with that in which Dante tells us he was ordered to descend to the shore of the lake as he entered Purgatory, to gather a rush