The Gift of the Magi
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Swarna Rangarajan
Oct 26, 2012, 8:30:24 AM10/26/12
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Dear Students,
The presentation today inspired me to post this classic love story
by O Henry. It is a great read for those of you who have not yet
stumbled on this piece.
Best
THE GIFT OF THE MAGI
by O. Henry
One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it
was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the
grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned
with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing
implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty- seven
cents. And the next day would be Christmas.
There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little
couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection
that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles
predominating.
While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first
stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8
per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had
that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.
In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go,
and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring.
Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James
Dillingham Young."
The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former period
of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now,
when the income was shrunk to $20, though, they were thinking
seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever
Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was
called "Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young,
already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.
Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag.
She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a
gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and
she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been
saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty
dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had
calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her
Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for
him. Something fine and rare and sterling--something just a little bit
near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.
There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you
have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile
person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of
longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks.
Della, being slender, had mastered the art.
Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. her
eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within
twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to
its full length.
Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in
which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had
been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair.
Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della
would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to
depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the
janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would
have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck
at his beard from envy.
So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like
a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself
almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and
quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear
or two splashed on the worn red carpet.
On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl
of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she
fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the sign read: "Mne. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All
Kinds." One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting.
Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the "Sofronie."
"Will you buy my hair?" asked Della.
"I buy hair," said Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at
the looks of it."
Down rippled the brown cascade.
"Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.
"Give it to me quick," said Della.
Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed
metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present.
She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else.
There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned
all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste
in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not
by meretricious ornamentation--as all good things should do. It was
even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must
be Jim's. It was like him. Quietness and value--the description
applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she
hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might
be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch
was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old
leather strap that he used in place of a chain.
When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence
and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went
to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which
is always a tremendous task, dear friends--a mammoth task.
Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls
that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at
her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.
"If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a
second look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl.
But what could I do--oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty-
seven cents?"
At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of
the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.
Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on
the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she
heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she
turned white for just a moment. She had a habit for saying little
silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she
whispered: "Please God, make him think I am still pretty."
The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and
very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two--and to be burdened
with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.
Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of
quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in
them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger,
nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments
that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with
that peculiar expression on his face.
Della wriggled off the table and went for him.
"Jim, darling," she cried, "don't look at me that way. I had my hair
cut off and sold because I couldn't have lived through Christmas
without giving you a present. It'll grow out again--you won't mind,
will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say `Merry
Christmas!' Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice-- what
a beautiful, nice gift I've got for you."
"You've cut off your hair?" asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not
arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.
"Cut it off and sold it," said Della. "Don't you like me just as well,
anyhow? I'm me without my hair, ain't I?"
Jim looked about the room curiously.
"You say your hair is gone?" he said, with an air almost of idiocy.
"You needn't look for it," said Della. "It's sold, I tell you--sold
and gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for
you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she went on with
sudden serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love for
you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?"
Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della.
For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some
inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or
a million a year--what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit
would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but
that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later
on.
Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.
"Don't make any mistake, Dell," he said, "about me. I don't think
there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that
could make me like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package
you may see why you had me going a while at first."
White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an
ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to
hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of
all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.
For there lay The Combs--the set of combs, side and back, that Della
had worshipped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure
tortoise shell, with jewelled rims--just the shade to wear in the
beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her
heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope
of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should
have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.
But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look
up with dim eyes and a smile and say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"
And them Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!"
Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him
eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash
with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.
"Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have
to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I
want to see how it looks on it."
Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands
under the back of his head and smiled.
"Dell," said he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a
while. They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to
get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops
on."
The magi, as you know, were wise men--wonderfully wise men--who
brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of
giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise
ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of
duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful
chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely
sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But
in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all
who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive
gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are
the magi.
On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 1:36 PM, Vamshi <surabhiv...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Mam, I've a class from 2 to 4:30 (R/T Slot). The 2'o clock slot is not free
> for 4th year CS students. So, all of us (CS students) can't attend today's
> class. Sorry mam, I would've mentioned this at the end of last class but I
> had to leave in a hurry as there was a quiz.
>
>
> Thank you mam,
> Vamshi.
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 25, 2012 at 5:25 PM, Swarna Rangarajan <swarn...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Dear students,
>> If you liked that symborska poem in the course work, you would
>> surely like this too.
>> Best, swarna
>>
>>
>> NO TITLE REQUIRED BY WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
>>
>> It has come to this: I'm sitting under a tree
>> beside a river
>> on a sunny morning.
>> It's an insignificant event
>> and won't go down in history.
>> It's not battles and pacts,
>> where motives are scrutinized,
>> or noteworthy tyrannicides.
>> And yet I'm sitting by this river, that's a fact.
>> And since I'm here
>> I must have come from somewhere,
>> and before that
>> I must have turned up in many other places,
>> exactly like the conquerors of nations
>> before setting sail.
>> Even a passing moment has its fertile past,
>> its Friday before Saturday,
>> its May before June.
>> Its horizons are no less real
>> than those that a marshal's field glasses might scan.
>> This tree is a poplar that's been rooted here for years.
>> The river is the Raba; it didn't spring up yesterday.
>> The path leading through the bushes
>> wasn't beaten last week.
>> The wind had to blow the clouds here
>> before it could blow them away.
>> And though nothing much is going on nearby,
>> the world is no poorer in details for that.
>> It's just as grounded, just as definite
>> as when migrating races held it captive.
>> Conspiracies aren't the only things shrouded in silence.
>> Retinues of reasons don't trail coronations alone.
>> Anniversaries of revolutions may roll around,
>> but so do oval pebbles encircling the bay.
>> The tapestry of circumstance is intricate and dense.
>> Ants stitching in the grass.
>> The grass sewn into the ground.
>> The pattern of a wave being needled by a twig.
>> So it happens that I am and look.
>> Above me a white butterfly is fluttering through the air
>> on wings that are its alone,
>> and a shadow skims through my hands
>> that is none other than itself, no one else's but its own.
>> When I see such things, I'm no longer sure
>> that what's important
>> is more important than what's not.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 8:44 PM, Swarna Rangarajan <swarn...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > Dear Students,
>> > I am sending along a really beautiful narrative- The Little Prince.
>> > The author,
>> > Antoine de Saint-Exupery (June 29, 1900 – presumably July 31, 1944)
>> > was a French writer and aviator. One of his most famous works is Le
>> > Petit Prince (The Little Prince). He disappeared on the night of July
>> > 31, 1944 while flying on a mission to collect data on German troop
>> > movements.
>> > The work speaks to us at many levels!
>> > Best, swarna
>> >
>> > On 10/18/12, Vaishali V <vaish...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> Hello :)
>> >>
>> >> The essay I presented in class today was this :
>> >> http://www.salon.com/2000/03/18/why/
>> >>
>> >> Another interesting essay by Pico Iyer is this - "The Joy of
>> >>
>> >> Quiet<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/opinion/sunday/the-joy-of-quiet.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0>
>> >> "
>> >>
>> >> Regards,
>> >> Vaishali
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> Vaishali V
>> >> III Year Integrated M.A. in Economics
>> >> Indian Institute of Technology, Madras
>> >> +91 97910 11442 <http://start.fedoraproject.org/>
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>> >> Groups
>> >> "Literature and Values Odd Sem" group.
>> >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
>> >> literature-and-value...@googlegroups.com.
>> >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
>> "Literature and Values Odd Sem" group.
>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
>> literature-and-value...@googlegroups.com.
>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Vamshidhar Rao Surabhi
> 4th Year CSE
> IITM
>
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Literature and Values Odd Sem" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> literature-and-value...@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
>
>
The presentation today inspired me to post this classic love story
by O Henry. It is a great read for those of you who have not yet
stumbled on this piece.
Best
THE GIFT OF THE MAGI
by O. Henry
One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it
was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the
grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned
with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing
implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty- seven
cents. And the next day would be Christmas.
There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little
couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection
that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles
predominating.
While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first
stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8
per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had
that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.
In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go,
and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring.
Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James
Dillingham Young."
The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former period
of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now,
when the income was shrunk to $20, though, they were thinking
seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever
Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was
called "Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young,
already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.
Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag.
She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a
gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and
she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been
saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty
dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had
calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her
Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for
him. Something fine and rare and sterling--something just a little bit
near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.
There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you
have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile
person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of
longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks.
Della, being slender, had mastered the art.
Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. her
eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within
twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to
its full length.
Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in
which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had
been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair.
Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della
would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to
depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the
janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would
have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck
at his beard from envy.
So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like
a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself
almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and
quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear
or two splashed on the worn red carpet.
On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl
of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she
fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the sign read: "Mne. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All
Kinds." One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting.
Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the "Sofronie."
"Will you buy my hair?" asked Della.
"I buy hair," said Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at
the looks of it."
Down rippled the brown cascade.
"Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.
"Give it to me quick," said Della.
Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed
metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present.
She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else.
There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned
all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste
in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not
by meretricious ornamentation--as all good things should do. It was
even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must
be Jim's. It was like him. Quietness and value--the description
applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she
hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might
be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch
was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old
leather strap that he used in place of a chain.
When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence
and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went
to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which
is always a tremendous task, dear friends--a mammoth task.
Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls
that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at
her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.
"If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a
second look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl.
But what could I do--oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty-
seven cents?"
At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of
the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.
Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on
the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she
heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she
turned white for just a moment. She had a habit for saying little
silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she
whispered: "Please God, make him think I am still pretty."
The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and
very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two--and to be burdened
with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.
Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of
quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in
them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger,
nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments
that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with
that peculiar expression on his face.
Della wriggled off the table and went for him.
"Jim, darling," she cried, "don't look at me that way. I had my hair
cut off and sold because I couldn't have lived through Christmas
without giving you a present. It'll grow out again--you won't mind,
will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say `Merry
Christmas!' Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice-- what
a beautiful, nice gift I've got for you."
"You've cut off your hair?" asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not
arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.
"Cut it off and sold it," said Della. "Don't you like me just as well,
anyhow? I'm me without my hair, ain't I?"
Jim looked about the room curiously.
"You say your hair is gone?" he said, with an air almost of idiocy.
"You needn't look for it," said Della. "It's sold, I tell you--sold
and gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for
you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she went on with
sudden serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love for
you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?"
Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della.
For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some
inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or
a million a year--what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit
would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but
that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later
on.
Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.
"Don't make any mistake, Dell," he said, "about me. I don't think
there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that
could make me like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package
you may see why you had me going a while at first."
White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an
ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to
hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of
all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.
For there lay The Combs--the set of combs, side and back, that Della
had worshipped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure
tortoise shell, with jewelled rims--just the shade to wear in the
beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her
heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope
of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should
have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.
But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look
up with dim eyes and a smile and say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"
And them Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!"
Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him
eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash
with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.
"Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have
to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I
want to see how it looks on it."
Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands
under the back of his head and smiled.
"Dell," said he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a
while. They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to
get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops
on."
The magi, as you know, were wise men--wonderfully wise men--who
brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of
giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise
ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of
duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful
chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely
sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But
in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all
who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive
gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are
the magi.
On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 1:36 PM, Vamshi <surabhiv...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Mam, I've a class from 2 to 4:30 (R/T Slot). The 2'o clock slot is not free
> for 4th year CS students. So, all of us (CS students) can't attend today's
> class. Sorry mam, I would've mentioned this at the end of last class but I
> had to leave in a hurry as there was a quiz.
>
>
> Thank you mam,
> Vamshi.
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 25, 2012 at 5:25 PM, Swarna Rangarajan <swarn...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Dear students,
>> If you liked that symborska poem in the course work, you would
>> surely like this too.
>> Best, swarna
>>
>>
>> NO TITLE REQUIRED BY WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
>>
>> It has come to this: I'm sitting under a tree
>> beside a river
>> on a sunny morning.
>> It's an insignificant event
>> and won't go down in history.
>> It's not battles and pacts,
>> where motives are scrutinized,
>> or noteworthy tyrannicides.
>> And yet I'm sitting by this river, that's a fact.
>> And since I'm here
>> I must have come from somewhere,
>> and before that
>> I must have turned up in many other places,
>> exactly like the conquerors of nations
>> before setting sail.
>> Even a passing moment has its fertile past,
>> its Friday before Saturday,
>> its May before June.
>> Its horizons are no less real
>> than those that a marshal's field glasses might scan.
>> This tree is a poplar that's been rooted here for years.
>> The river is the Raba; it didn't spring up yesterday.
>> The path leading through the bushes
>> wasn't beaten last week.
>> The wind had to blow the clouds here
>> before it could blow them away.
>> And though nothing much is going on nearby,
>> the world is no poorer in details for that.
>> It's just as grounded, just as definite
>> as when migrating races held it captive.
>> Conspiracies aren't the only things shrouded in silence.
>> Retinues of reasons don't trail coronations alone.
>> Anniversaries of revolutions may roll around,
>> but so do oval pebbles encircling the bay.
>> The tapestry of circumstance is intricate and dense.
>> Ants stitching in the grass.
>> The grass sewn into the ground.
>> The pattern of a wave being needled by a twig.
>> So it happens that I am and look.
>> Above me a white butterfly is fluttering through the air
>> on wings that are its alone,
>> and a shadow skims through my hands
>> that is none other than itself, no one else's but its own.
>> When I see such things, I'm no longer sure
>> that what's important
>> is more important than what's not.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 8:44 PM, Swarna Rangarajan <swarn...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > Dear Students,
>> > I am sending along a really beautiful narrative- The Little Prince.
>> > The author,
>> > Antoine de Saint-Exupery (June 29, 1900 – presumably July 31, 1944)
>> > was a French writer and aviator. One of his most famous works is Le
>> > Petit Prince (The Little Prince). He disappeared on the night of July
>> > 31, 1944 while flying on a mission to collect data on German troop
>> > movements.
>> > The work speaks to us at many levels!
>> > Best, swarna
>> >
>> > On 10/18/12, Vaishali V <vaish...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> Hello :)
>> >>
>> >> The essay I presented in class today was this :
>> >> http://www.salon.com/2000/03/18/why/
>> >>
>> >> Another interesting essay by Pico Iyer is this - "The Joy of
>> >>
>> >> Quiet<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/opinion/sunday/the-joy-of-quiet.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0>
>> >> "
>> >>
>> >> Regards,
>> >> Vaishali
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> Vaishali V
>> >> III Year Integrated M.A. in Economics
>> >> Indian Institute of Technology, Madras
>> >> +91 97910 11442 <http://start.fedoraproject.org/>
>> >>
>> >> --
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>> >> literature-and-value...@googlegroups.com.
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>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Vamshidhar Rao Surabhi
> 4th Year CSE
> IITM
>
>
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