The Dandelion Girl - an unforgettable story

Once in a long while, one comes across a piece of writing, which asks for a permanent place in ones memory. The Dandelion Girl by Robert F Young, for me, is such a piece of writing. It is a beautiful story inspired by a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay - Afternoon on a Hill, which opens with the memorable lines:

I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.

The theme is love across time. Told in the first person it comes over as entirely believable and generates such sublime emotions which should make the heart pulsate in ones ribcage.

The story starts in 1961 when a middle aged married lawyer goes on vacation without his wife who is at jury duty. He stays at a cottage in a wooded area by a lake and spends his time reading and exploring his surroundings. One day he climbs a hill in the vicinity and meets a young girl who claims to have come from 2201 in the future with the help of a time machine her father has invented. He does not believe her but goes along with it to humour her. The story from thereon takes emotionally poignant twists and concludes with a romantically idealised and ardent ending leaving the reader with an undefined and unrequitable longing.

[ If read aloud and at a slower pace these words assume a greater poignancy.]
Here you may read the original text of this beautiful story - The Dandelion Girl.
{N.B. Sometimes the link takes longer than expected. So one has to be patient.}
Since reading this story I have been thinking of creating a website to share it with others.
I have a few other stories which I will want to include.