Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/168

158 other respects the same with the white is the strigosum or the annuum.

Nymphœa odorata. Again I scent the white lily, and a season I had waited for has arrived. How indispensable all these experiences to make up the summer. It is the emblem of purity, and its scent suggests it. Growing in stagnant and muddy water, it bursts up so pure and fair to the eye and so sweet to the scent, as if to show us what purity and sweetness reside in and can be extracted from the slime and muck of earth. It is the resurrection of virtue. It is these sights and sounds and fragrances that convince us of our immortality. No man believes against all evidence. Our external senses consent with our internal. This fragrance assures me that though all other men fall, one shall stand fast, though a pestilence sweep over the earth, it shall at least spare one man. The Genius of Nature is unimpaired. Her flowers are as fair and as fragrant as ever.

As for birds, I think that their choir begins to be decidedly less full and loud. The bobolink, full strains, but farther between.

The Rosa nitida grows along the edge of the ditches, the half open flowers showing the deepest rosy tints, so glowing that they make an evening or twilight of the surrounding afternoon, seeming to stand in the shade or twilight.