May, poem by Hilaire Belloc

MAY
by Hilaire Belloc

This is the laughing-eyed amongst them all:
My lady’s month. A season of young things.
She rules the light with harmony, and brings
The year’s first green upon the beeches tall.
How often, where long creepers wind and fall
Through the deep woods in noonday wanderings,
I’ve heard the month, when she to echo sings,
I’ve heard the month make merry madrigal.

How often, bosomed in the breathing strong
Of mosses and young flowerets, have I lain
And watched the clouds, and caught the sheltered song —
Which it were more than life to hear again —
Of those small birds that pipe it all day long
Not far from Marly by the memoried Seine.

PAINTING: “The Seine at Port Marly” by Camille Pissarro (1872).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc (1870–1953), born in France and raised in England, was a writer, orator, poet, satirist, and political activist. He has been called one of the Big Four of Edwardian Letters, along with H.G.Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and G. K. Chesterton. Belloc observed that “the first job of letters is to get a canon,” that is, to identify those works which a writer looks upon as exemplary of the best of prose and verse. For his own prose style, he claimed to aspire to be as clear and concise as “Mary had a little lamb.” (Source: wikipedia.org.)

The importance of style, quote by Gustave Flaubert

There are neither good nor bad subjects. From the point of view of pure Art, you could almost establish it as an axiom that the subject is irrelevant, style itself being an absolute manner of seeing things.” GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Photo: John Payne

On days when it was too hot, quote by Gustave Flaubert

“On days when it was too hot, they did not leave their room. The dazzling brilliance from outside plastered bars of light between the slats of the blinds. Not a sound in the village. Down below, on the sidewalk, no one.” GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, A Simple Heart

The Bird, poem by Victor Hugo

THE BIRD
by Victor Hugo

Be like the bird, who
Pausing in his flight
On limb too slight
Feels it give way beneath him
Yet sings
Knowing he has wings. 

Painting: “Flower and Bird” by Zhou XinRong, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Prints of the painting are available at artinroom.net.

The Little Prince, Book by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

THE LITTLE PRINCE (Excerpt)
By Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“GOOD MORNING,” said the little prince. 

“Good Morning,” said the salesclerk. This was a salesclerk who sold pills invented to quench thirst. Swallow one a week and you no longer feel any need to drink.

“Why do you sell these pills?”

“They save so much time,” the salesclerk said. “Experts have calculated that you can save fifty-three minutes a week.”

“And what do you do with those fifty-three minutes?”

“Whatever you like.”

“If I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked,” the little prince said to himself, “I’d walk very slowly toward a water fountain…” 

Photo: Actress Jean Seberg (1938-1979) reads THE LITTLE PRINCE by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944). (Photo, circa 1960.)