18/1001

Short story: no short story. I had to read seen chapters in The Endless Steppe for my Jr. High literature class. I'm enjoying the book more than I expected. I think as I get older, these world War 1 and 2 books are more appealing because you can see the full spectrum of human nature on display, from the beastly atrocities committed by those in power to the courageous acts of kindness and love by ordinary people. The resilience of hope and the human spirit, too. 

Essay: The Almost Perfect State by Don Marquies from this collection of essays. There is an essay by A.A. Milne in this collection, which I'm interested to read. 

Poem:

Words

by Edward Thomas

Out of us all

That make rhymes

Will you choose

Sometimes -

As the winds use

A crack in a wall

Or a drain,

Their joy or their pain

To whistle through -

Choose me,

You English words?

I know you:

You are light as dreams,

Tough as oak,

Precious as gold,

As poppies and corn,

Or an old cloak:

Sweet as our birds

To the ear,

As the burnet rose

In the heat

Of Midsummer:

Strange as the races

Of dead and unborn:

Strange and sweet

Equally,

And familiar,

To the eye,

As the dearest faces

That a man knows,

And as lost homes are:

But though older far

Than oldest yew, -

As our hills are, old, -

Worn new

Again and again:

Young as our streams

After rain:

And as dear

As the earth which you prove

That we love.

Make me content

With some sweetness

From Wales

Whose nightingales

Have no wings, -

From Wiltshire and Kent

And Herefordshire, -

And the villages there, -

From the names, and the things

No less.

Let me sometimes dance

With you,

Or climb

Or stand perchance

In ecstasy,

Fixed and free

In a rhyme,

As poets do.

I loved this painting

Ivan Aivazovsky, The Wrath of the Seas