Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/208

198 that they may suffer their bodies to stagnate in luxury or sloth. The body is the first proselyte the soul makes. Our life is but the soul made known by its fruits, the body. The whole duty of man may be expressed in one line. Make to yourself a perfect body.

June 21, 1852. 7 To Cliffs via Hubbard bathing-place. Cherry birds I have not seen, though I think I have heard them before, their fine seringo note, like a vibrating spring in the air. They are a handsome bird with their crest and chestnut breasts. There is no keeping the run of their comings and goings, but they will be ready for the cherries when they shall be ripe.

The adder's-tongue arethusa smells exactly like a snake. How singular that in Nature, too, beauty and offensiveness should be thus combined. In flowers as well as persons we demand a beauty pure and fragrant which perfumes the air. The flower which is showy but has no odor, or an offensive one, expresses the character of too many mortals.

Nature has looked uncommonly bare and dry to me for a day or two. With our senses applied to the surrounding world we are reading our physical and corresponding moral revolutions. Nature was shallow all at once. I did not know what had attracted me all my life. I