Purity out of mud

Found two lilies open in the very shallow inlet of the meadow. Exquisitely beautiful, and unlike anything else we have, is the first white Lily just expanded in some shallow lagoon where the water is leaving it, - perfectly fresh and pure, before the insects have discovered it.

How admirable its purity! How innocently sweet its fragrance! How significant that the rich, black mud of our dead stream produces the water-lily, - out of that fertile slime springs this spotless purity! It is remarkable that those flowers which are most emblematical of purity should grow in the mud.

Henry David Thoreau