STRANGE FITS OF PASSION HAVE I KNOWN ~ 
William Wordsworth*

Strange fits of passion have I known.

And I will dare to tell,

But in the Lover's ear alone,

What once to me befell.

When she I loved looked every day

Fresh as a rose in June,

I to her cottage bent my way,

Beneath an evening moon.

Upon the moon I fixed my eye,

All over the wide lea;

With quickening pace my horse drew nigh

Those paths so dear to me.

And now we reached the orchard plot;

And, as we climbed the hill,

The sinking moon to Lucy's cot

Came near, and nearer still.

In one of those sweet dreams I slept,

Kind Nature's gentlest boon!

And all the while my eyes I kept

On the descending moon.

My horse moved on; hoof after hoof

He raised, and never stopped:

When down behind the cottage roof,

At once, the bright moon dropped.

What fond and wayward thoughts will slide

Into a Lover's head!

"O mercy!" to myself I cried,

"If Lucy should be dead!"

~ *English poet (1770 - 1850) helped launch the Romantic period in English literature.

March 8 is International Women's Day.

At The Neat L'l Bookshop we think of used books as a serious way to Recycle/Reuse/Reread.
"Never waste a book."

Books are checked for condition and only if we cannot sell, delivered to the most appropriate charity.  Good books keep on trading.
If beyond use, we recycle properly.

Landfill is a bad word here.

Mysteries in The Neat L'l Bookshop

. . .and True Crime.

"I think that I shall never see
A poem as lovely as a tree." ~ Alfred Joyce Kilmer (1886 - 1918)

Tell us about one of your favourite trees.  It could be one that you sat under as a kid.  Could be one that you shared special moments with family or friends.  Perhaps you relate a certain tree to memories of Grandparents, parents or others.  It may simply be a tree that you particularly admire.

The Neat Little Bookshop is offering a cool prize (of course, it is a book) for the first, second and third most compelling photo or story/ or both.  The judges will be individuals well qualified to understand our love of trees.

Please watch for further details.  Deadline for entries, Sunday, May 31.*

Submissions may be made at neatlittlebookshop@gmail.com or in person at The Neat Little Bookshop, 29 Talbot Street (Hwy 3), Cayuga, ON.  We will share details on Facebook and Twitter.  If you prefer, attach submission to a text 905.577.5635 or post on facebook, The Neat Little Bookshop


*[Please Note Change:  Deadline for entries has been moved to TUESDAY, JUNE 30 ~ yes, so that our trees will have LEAVES!]  Keep an eye on our trees and watch for photo details.]

"Coffee-table books provide one type of view of Ontario.  Prize-winning photographs ~ of Queen's Park, Fort Henry, a fall fair, Tillsonburg's main street, Agawa Canyon, gingerbread trim, the steamboat Segwun, the Blue Jays, Mennonites haying, and so on ~ present Ontario as a recreational playground in a benign setting.  The heritage village at Lang ~ or Doon, or Black Creek, or Morrisburg ~ has its page, too.  It is the predictable reminder that history is found behind a ticket window, through a turnstile.    'Foodland Ontario' is another popular subject;: a roadside stall of sweet corn in Leeds County, a 'U-pick' strawberry or apple farm in Halton, the weekly vegetable market in the corner of a shopping mall in Waterdown, or an estate winery's tasting boutique in Grimsby."
. . .
"The old Ontario landscape is a remnant and has been attacked from both the city side and the cottage side for years.  Suburbanization is rural renewal with no opportunity of going back to an earlier, less crowded era.  Beyond, former city folks ('exurbanites') attempt to maintain a country look, but with no intention of being rural."
. . .
"A drive between Shelburne and Collingwood is a showcase of rural Ontario in the 1990s.  This is a countryside of marketing boards, crop insurance, RRSPs, and CD players.  Farm kitchens have filing cabinets, personal computers, and fax machines.  The number of low metal farm buildings is greater than seems proper.  The nineteenth-century houses are more and more noteworthy amid so many new dwellings, both at the roadside and back on the farm.  It may still be rural, but the feeling is changing.  The city has become the standard, and the old, comfortable countryside is rapidly becoming part of folklore."

Thomas F. McIlwraith, LOOKING FOR OLD ONTARIO, University of Toronto Press, 1997

"The barns of old Ontario speak for themselves as ageless artistic works of great power, built for the millennium.  Gaps between barn boards are not the result of carelessness but were deliberately included, to provide for air circulation.  They also admit filtered light, and an empty barn in June, just before the first hay is garnered, can inspire thoughts of medieval cathedrals.  The silver-grey boards and lustreless steel roofs signal a timeless commitment to the land."

~ Thomas F. McIlwraith, LOOKING FOR OLD ONTARIO, University of Toronto Incorporated, 1997.

The opening paragraphs of Looking For Old Ontario ~ by Thomas F. McIlwraith

"Many people have looked at Ontario's landscape without really seeing it, or have been bored by what they saw.  Charles Dickens, writing in 1842, found Ontario very flat and 'bare of scenic interest';  the Canadian Illustrated News a few years later described it as 'tame and domestic.'  An 1894 tourist guide bluntly stated that between Smiths Falls and Perth 'the country is unattractive.'  John Kenneth Galbraith called his childhood area, west of St. Thomas, in the 1920s 'an uninteresting country.'  A Manitoban used words such as 'sober,' 'stable,' and 'serene' to describe his adopted province in the 1960s.  A British colleague of mine once spoke of 'beautiful monotony' after spending a day driving up and down the straight roads near Lindsay...
"The rumpled countryside is a marvellous place that Ontarians have inhabited and continually reinvented.  It may be ambiguous and perplexing, but surely not dull.
"To appreciate a living landscape we must also draw on the written record from such sources as biography and legistlative studies, to understand long-gone events."

~ University of Toronto Press, 1997
[Tomorrow:  more of Ontario.]