Explore "A Glimpse of Pan" by James Whitcomb Riley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I caught but a glimpse of him. Summer was here, / And I strayed from the town and its dust and heat / And walked in a wood, while the noon was near, / Where the shadows were cool, and the atmosphere / Was misty with fragrances stirred by my feet / From surges of blossoms that billowed sheer / O'er the grasses, green and sweet.
And I peered through a vista of leaning trees, / Tressed with long tangles of vines that swept / To the face of a river, that answered these / With vines in the wave like the vines in the breeze, / Till the yearning lips of the ripples crept / And kissed them, with quavering ecstacies, / And gurgled and laughed and wept.
And there, like a dream in a swoon, I swear / I saw Pan lying, -- his limbs in the dew / And the shade, and his face in the dazzle and glare / Of the glad sunshine; while everywhere, / Over, across, and around him blew / Filmy dragonflies hither and there, / And little white butterflies, two and two, / In eddies of odorous air.