When they have handled hay--in the time of
hay-harvest, or in winter, when they bring hay down from mountain
huts--the youthful peasants carry about with them the smell of 'a
field the Lord hath blessed.' Their bodies and their clothes
exhale an indefinable fragrance of purity and sex combined. Every
gland of the robust frame seems to have accumulated scent from
herbs and grasses, which slowly exudes from the cool, fresh skin
of the lad. You do not perceive it in a room. You must take the
young man's hands and bury your face in them, or be covered with
him under the same blanket in one bed, to feel this aroma. No
sensual impression on the nerves of smell is more poignantly
impregnated with spiritual poetry--the poetry of adolescence, and
early hours upon the hills, and labor cheerfully accomplished,
and the harvest of God's gifts to man brought home by human
industry. It is worth mentioning that Aristophanes, in his
description of the perfect Athenian Ephebus, dwells upon his
being redolent of natural perfumes."
In a passage in the second part of _Faust_ Goethe (who appears to
have felt considerable interest in the psychology of smell) makes
three women speak concerning the ambrosiacal odor of young men.
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