Explore "A Wraith of Summertime" by James Whitcomb Riley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In its color, shade and shine, / 'T was a summer warm as wine, / With an effervescent flavoring of flowered bough and vine, / And a fragrance and a taste / Of ripe roses gone to waste, / And a dreamy sense of sun- and moon- and star-light interlaced.
'Twas a summer such as broods / O'er enchanted solitudes, / Where the hand of Fancy leads us through voluptuary moods, / And with lavish love out-pours / All the wealth of out-of-doors, / And woos our feet o'er velvet paths and honeysuckle floors.
'Twas a summertime long dead, -- / And its roses, white and red, / And its reeds and water-lilies down along the river-bed, -- / O they all are ghostly things -- / For the ripple never sings, / And the rocking lily never even rustles as it rings!