Explore "Marius the Epicurean" by Walter Pater on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The two lads were lounging together over a book, half-buried in a heap of dry corn, in an old granary -- the quiet corner to which they had climbed out of the way of their noisier companions on one of their blandest holiday afternoons. They looked round: the western sun smote through the broad chinks of the shutters. How like a picture! and it was precisely the scene described in what they were reading, with just that added poetic touch in the book which made it delightful and select, and, in the actual place, the ray of sunlight transforming the rough grain among the cool brown shadows into heaps of gold. What they were intent on was, indeed, the book of books, the "golden" book of that day, a gift to Flavian, as was shown by the purple writing on the handsome yellow wrapper, following the title Flaviane! -- it said,
Flaviane! / lege / Felicitur! / Flaviane! / Vivas! / Fioreas! / Flaviane! / Vivas! / Gaudeas!