Fun_People Archive
10 Oct
LIT BITS V3 #284


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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 100 17:10:53 -0700
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Subject: LIT BITS V3 #284

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Excerpted-from: LITERARY CALENDAR V3 #284
From: ptervin@pent.yasuda-u.ac.jp

Today is Wednesday, 11 October 2000; on this day,

241 years ago (1759),

     Parson (Mason Locke) Weems is born near Herring Bay, Maryland.  The 5th
     edition of his biography of George Washington (1806), fictionalized
     to make it more interesting, will create the cherry tree myth.

83 years ago (1917),

     In her diary Virginia Woolf notes her first impressions of Katherine
     Mansfield: "I'm a little shocked by her commonness at first sight;
     lines so hard and cheap. However, when this diminishes, she is so
     intelligent and inscrutable that she repays friendship."

Today's poem:

                     Camomile Tea

     Outside the sky is light with stars;
     There's a hollow roaring from the sea.
     And, alas! for the little almond flowers,
     The wind is shaking the almond tree.

     How little I thought, a year ago,
     In the horrible cottage upon the Lee
     That he and I should be sitting so
     And sipping a cup of camomile tea.

     Light as feathers the witches fly,
     The horn of the moon is plain to see;
     By a firefly under a jonquil flower
     A goblin toasts a bumble-bee.

     We might be fifty, we might be five,
     So snug, so compact, so wise are we!
     Under the kitchen-table leg
     My knee is pressing against his knee.

     Our shutters are shut, the fire is low,
     The tap is dripping peacefully;
     The saucepan shadows on the wall
     Are black and round and plain to see.

                                         Katherine Mansfield


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