Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/251

Rh them go by and come into church, when I used to go myself, smelling a pond lily, so that the flower is to some extent associated with bathing on Sabbath mornings and going to church, its odor contrasting with and atoning for that of the sermon. We have roses on the land and lilies on the water. Both land and water have done their best, now just after the longest day. Nature says, You behold the utmost I can do. And the young women carry their finest roses on the other hand. Roses and lilies. The floral days. The red rose, with the intense color of many suns concentrated, spreads its tender petals perfectly fair, its flower not to be overlooked, modest, yet queenly, on the edges of shady copses and meadows, against its green leaves, surrounded by blushing buds, of perfect form, not only beautiful, but rightfully commanding attention, unspoiled by the admiration of gazers. And the water lily floats on the surface of slow waters, amid rounded shields of leaves, bucklers red beneath, which simulate a green field, perfuming the air. Each instantly the prey of the spoiler, the rose-bug and water insects. How transitory the perfect beauty of the rose and the lily. The highest, intensest color belongs to the land; the purest, perchance, to the water. The lily is perhaps the only flower which all are eager to pluck. It may be partly