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Poetry

There is a pleasure in the pathless words…
To mingle with the universe, and feel
What I can ne’er express, yet can not all conceal.
—Byron

The words are lovely, dark and deep.  —Frost

I went to the words because I wished to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of language.  —Thoreau

In the words we return to reason and faith.  —Emerson

Come to the words, for here is rest.  —Muir

Literature does not grow wild in the words.  —Burroughs

I put my heart to school in the words.  —Van Dyke

In the words is perpetual youth.  —Emerson

Whose words these are I think I know.  —Frost

We are not out of the words yet.  —Keyes

Terri Guillemets

The King’s maths

“What is seven times six?”

Rabbit wondered what to say. “Forty-two” was the right answer. But the King, who could do no wrong, even in arithmetic, might decide, for the purposes, that “fifty-four” was an answer more becoming to the future of the country. Was it, then, safe to say “Forty-two”?

“Your Majesty,” he said, “there are several possible answers to this extraordinarily novel conundrum. At first sight the obvious solution would appear to be ‘forty-two.’  The objection to this solution is that it lacks originality. I have long felt that a progressive country such as ours might well strike out a new line in the matter. Let us agree that in future seven sixes are fifty-four.”

The King scratched his head. “The correct answer,” he said, “is, or will be in the future, fifty-four.”

“Make a note of that,” whispered the Chancellor to the Chief Secretary.

—A. A. Milne, “Prince Rabbit,” 1924, a little altered