.
Tip: Again, to get the best effect, you have to read it aloud.  Swing into the rhythm.

---

if up's the word ;and a world grows greener
minute by second and most by more--
if death is the loser and life is the winner
(and beggars are rich but misers are poor)
--let's touch the sky :
                                  with a to and a fro
(and a here there where)and away we go

in even the laziest creature among us
a wisdom no knoledge can kill is astir--
now dull eyes are keen and now keen eyes are keener
(for young is the year,for young is the year)
--let's touch the sky :
                                  with a great(and a gay
and a steep)deep rush through amazing day

it's brains without hearts have set saint against sinner;
put gain over gladness and joy under care--
let's do as an earth which can never do wrong does
(minute by second and most by more)
--let's touch the sky :
                                  with a strange(and a true)
and a climbing fall into far near blue

if beggars are rich(and a robin will sing his
robin a song)but misers are poor--
let's love until noone could quite be(and young is
the year,dear)as living as i'm and as you're
--let's touch the sky :
                                  with a you and a me
and an every(who's any who's some)one who's we

-- e.e. cummings

---

I just...wow.
.

.
For those of you who like the oddnesses of words:

In Spanish, the word for "gooseflesh" is escalofrios, which basically translates to ladder chills.

.



( Click for desktop-size image )

This year, I acquired a flip-calendar called Forgotten English. One interesting, archaic word per day, along with its definition and a paragraph of relevant information pertaining to it. It's fascinating reading, and most informative.

Would there be any interest in my posting the Forgotten Word of the Day? I'm thinking hobbit writers might find it especially useful.

As a tease, here is the word for January 30:


Lunting

Walking and smoking a pipe. - John Mactaggart's Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824

Feast Day of St. Aldegard, a patron of those suffering from lung cancer. One misinformed eighteenth-century medico, identified only as a Dr. Forster, is quoted in William Hone's Every-day Book...of Popular Amusements (1826-27) as heartily commending the medicial use of smoking, especially during winter months, because it helped "guard against colds, and above all against the contagion of typhus and other fevers, which are apt to prevail in the early spring." He added: "Smoking tobacco is a very salutary practice in general, as well as being a preventive against infection in particular...Smoking is a custom which should be recommended in the close cottages of the poor, and in great populous towns liable to contagion." An anonymous poem of Forster's time echoed these sentiments:

Tobacco I love and tobacco I'll take,
And hope good tobacco I ne'er shall forsake.
'Tis drinking and wenching destroys still the creature,
But this noble fune does dry up ill nature.