The Perfume of an Evening Primrose. 24 



blossoms are all about me, for miles and for leagues 

 on that great level expanse, as if the morning wind 

 had blown them out of that eastern sky and 

 scattered their pale yellow stars in millions over 

 the surface of the tall sere grass. 



I do not say that this shock of pleasure I have 

 described, this vivid reproduction of a long past 

 scene, is experienced each time I smell the flower ; 

 it is experienced fully only at long intervals, after 

 weeks and months, when the fragrance is, so to 

 speak, new to me, and afterwards in a lesser degree 

 on each repetition, until the feeling is exhausted. 

 If I continue to smell again and again at the flower, 

 I do it only as a spur to memory; or in a mechanical 

 way, just as a person might always walk along a 

 certain path with his eyes fixed on the ground, 

 remembering that he once on a time dropped some 

 valuable article there, and although he knows that 

 it was lost irrecoverably, he still searches the 

 ground for it. 



Other vegetable odours affect me in a similar 

 way, but in a very much fainter degree, except in 

 one or two cases. Thus, the Lombardy poplar was 

 one of the trees I first became acquainted with in 

 childhood, and it has ever since been a pleasure to 

 me to see it ; but in spring, when its newly opened 

 leaves give out their peculiar aroma, for a moment, 

 when I first smell it, I am actually a boy again, 

 among the tall poplar trees, their myriads of heart- 

 shaped leaves rustling to the hot November wind> 

 and sparkling like silver in the brilliant sunshine. 



R 



