Explore "The Blue Flower" by Henry Van Dyke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The parents were abed and sleeping. The clock on the wall ticked loudly / and lazily, as if it had time to spare. Outside the rattling windows / there was a restless, whispering wind. The room grew light, and dark, / and wondrous light again, as the moon played hide-and-seek through the / clouds. The boy, wide-awake and quiet in his bed, was thinking of the / Stranger and his stories.
"It was not what he told me about the treasures," he said to himself, / "that was not the thing which filled me with so strange a longing. I / am not greedy for riches. But the Blue Flower is what I long for. I can / think of nothing else. Never have I felt so before. It seems as if I / had been dreaming until now -- or as if I had just slept over into a new / world.