AMONG THE WILD FLOWERS 67 



hermit thrush immediately after did even more 

 for the ear than the lily did for the eye. Presently 

 the swamp sparrow, one of the rarest of the spar- 

 rows, was seen and heard; and that nest there in a 

 small bough a few feet over the water proves to be 

 hers, in appearance a ground-bird's nest in a 

 bough, with the same four speckled eggs. As we 

 come in sight of the lilies, where they cover the 

 water at the outlet of the lake, a brisk gust of wind, 

 as if it had been waiting to surprise us, sweeps 

 down and causes every leaf to leap from the water 

 and show its pink under side. Was it a fluttering of 

 hundreds of wings, or the clapping of a multitude 

 of hands? But there rocked the lilies with their 

 golden hearts open to the sun, and their tender 

 white petals as fresh as crystals of snow. What a 

 queenly flower, indeed, the type of unsullied purity 

 and sweetness! Its root, like a black, corrugated, 

 ugly reptile, clinging to the slime, but its flower in 

 purity and whiteness like a star. There is some- 

 thing very pretty in the closed bud making its way 

 up through the water to meet the sun; and there is 

 something touching in the flower closing itself up 

 again after its brief career, and slowly burying itself 

 beneath the dark wave. One almost fancies a sad, 

 regretful look in it as the stem draws it downward 

 to mature its seed on the sunless bottom. The pond- 

 lily is a flower of the morning; it closes a little after 

 noon; but after you have plucked it and carried it 



