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| Our early spring bumper crop of wild calla lillies |
“I remember as a boy of not more than nine if that, having to memorize a verse by Ben Jonson of all people. ‘It is now growing like a tree, in bulk doth make man better be, or standing long at oak, a thousand year. The lily of the day is fairer far than they,’ and so on. And what he said was that you can live a good life, even if it’s a short one. And that was pumped into us, and we were made to memorize it, and that has grown in my mind. I’ve come from hearing it as a child to realizing, in old age really, what it really means. The quality of life. Well, you see, that’s big stuff in education. You give that to little children, and you have set a time bomb in their minds. Sometime or another they’re going to wake up and think, that’s what he said. And that’s what education is.”
Robertson Davies
