Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/119

Rh your own country, even in your own neighborhood, that you would be so thoroughly prepared to understand what you saw. You would make fewer traveler s mistakes.

Is not he hospitable who entertains thoughts?

June 12, 1852. To Lupine Hill via Depot Field Brook. The meadows are yellow with golden senecio. Marsh speedwell, Veronica scutellata, lilac tinted, rather pretty. The mouse-ear forget-me-not, Myosotis laxa, has now extended its racemes? very much, and hangs over the edge of the brook. It is one of the most interesting minute flowers. It is the more beautiful for being small and unpretending; even flowers must be modest. The blue flag, Iris versicolor. Its buds are a dark, indigo-blue tip beyond the green calyx. It is rich, but hardly delicate and simple enough. A very handsome, sword-shaped leaf. The blue-eyed grass is one of the most beautiful of flowers.; It might have been famous from Proserpine down. It will bear to be praised by poets.

The blue flag, notwithstanding its rich furniture, its fringed, re-curved parasols over its anthers, and its variously streaked and colored petals, is loose and coarse in its habit. How completely all character is expressed by flowers. This is a little too showy and gaudy, like some women's bonnets. Yet it belongs to the meadow