Getting Some Air

Anemones and Chinese Vase  Henri Matisse

The Table and the Chair 

by Edward Lear
Said the table to the chair,
"You can scarcely be aware
How I suffer from the heat
And from blisters on my feet!
If we took a little walk
We might have a little talk.
Pray, let us take the air!"
Said the table to the chair.

Said the chair unto the table,
"Now you know we are not able!
How foolishly you talk
When you know we cannot walk!"
Said the table with a sigh,
"It can do no harm to try.
I've as many legs as you.
Why can't we walk on two?"

So they both went slowly down,
And walked about the town,
With a cheerful bumpy sound
As they toddled all around.
And everybody cried
As they ran up to their side
"See! The table and the chair
Have come out to take the air!"

But, in going down an alley,
To the castle, in the valley,
They completely lost their way
And they wandered all the day
‘Til, to see them safely back,
They paid a ducky-quack
And a beetle and a mouse
To take them to their house.

Then they whispered to each other
"Oh delightful little brother!
What a lovely walk we've taken!
Let us dine on beans and bacon!"
So the ducky and the little
Brownie-mousey and the beetle
Dined, and danced upon their heads,
‘Til they toddled to their beds.

Winter's Pull

A Snowy Landscape  Cuno Amiet

Spellbound

by Emily Brontë

The night is darkening round me,

The wild winds coldly blow;

But a tyrant spell has bound me

And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending

Their bare boughs weighed with snow.

And the storm is fast descending,

And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,

Wastes beyond wastes below;

But nothing dear can move me;

I will not, cannot go.

Global Perspectives

I and the Village  Marc Chagall

from Salut au Monde!

by Walt Whitman

What do you see Walt Whitman?
Who are they you salute, and that one after another salute you?
I see a great round wonder rolling through space,
I see diminute farms, hamlets, ruins, graveyards, jails, factories,
palaces, hovels, huts of barbarians, tents of nomads upon the surface,
I see the shaded part on one side where the sleepers are sleeping,
and the sunlit part on the other side,
I see the curious rapid change of the light and shade,
I see distant lands, as real and near to the inhabitants of them as
my land is to me.