A Virgin Wearing a White Ruff

[The] yarrow is particularly fresh and perfect, cold and chaste, with its pretty little dry-looking rounded white petals and green leaves.
Its very color gives it a right to bloom above the snow, as level as a snow-crust on the top of the stubble.
It looks like a virgin wearing a white ruff.

Note: Henry David Thoreau wrote this in his journal on this day in 1855.