Inspirations

Giorgione, The Three Philosophers, c. 1506

A Riddle

O  Little Bear! O Greenyfinch!
O Snowflake, Little Swan!
The fire's on the mountain,
And the day is nearly gone.
Come home, come home, your master calls,
Now, down the mountain go:
Your little mistress needs your milk
To sweetly, strongly grow.

O Little Swan! O Greenyfinch!
Snowflake and Little Bear!
You've grazed all day the mountain herbs
And drunk the mountain air,
And now your little mistress waits,
And rosy gleams the snow:
Come down and give your rich, white milk
To make your mistress grow.
Your frothy, warm, sweet nectar milk
Will heal your mistress so!

In what classic work of children's literature will you meet Little Bear, Little Swan, Greenfinch and Snowflake?

Scroll down to find the answer and read past riddles.

“Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”


-Albert Einstein

WOULDA-COULDA-SHOULDA

All the Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas
Layin’ in the sun,
Talkin’ ‘bout the things
They woulda-coulda-shoulda done…
But those Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas
All ran away and hid
From one little did.

-Shel Silverstein, Falling Up

Albrecht Dürer, St Jerome in his Study, 1514

“All of us love to do the things that we do well... but if you never try to do things that are hard for you, then you will never understand and believe that you can overcome things that are hard for you. And so I say, if you love math, do more reading and writing; if you love reading and writing, do more math. Challenge yourself every day, and you're going to be better for it."

-Condoleezza Rice

“The strongest people in the world are not those most protected: They are the ones who must struggle against adversity and obstacles and surmount them to survive.”

-Robert L. Woodson Sr. 

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before you hold all the evidence.  It biases the judgement.”


-Sherlock Holmes in A Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle

“Discovery consists of seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought.”

-Albert Szent-Györgyi

Carl Larsson, Correspondence, 1912

“I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it."

-Vincent Van Gogh

The Lyme Brain’s Refrain,
or At the Cupboard

What am I doing?
What am I doing?
What am I, what am I, what am I doing?
I’m doing something – something I’m doing –
But what am I, what am I, what am I doing?

What am I doing?
Where am I going?
Why am I here, and why am I not knowing?
Knowing I’m doing and somewhere I’m going,
But where I am going I’ve no way of knowing.

Where am I going?
When am I knowing?
Tomorrow or Tuesday or when it starts snowing?
When it starts snowing I’ll know where I’m going,
But ‘til it starts snowing, to go without knowing?

When am I knowing?
Who am I seeing?
Was what I was doing a seeing or being?
Or finding or looking or thinking or fleeing?
Or am I now seeing my looking for being?

Looking for being,
Finding for doing,
Tomorrow and Tuesday and fleeing and shooing…
Was one of these being the thing I was doing?
Or was it an –
Oh!
That’s what I was doing.

-Jack DesBois

Uncle Gard's Wisdom:

“If at first you don't succeed, try reading the directions."

“Always do your bit, and a little bit more."

“Take more of the blame and less of the credit."

-Gardner L. Bent (1923-2018)

Past Riddles

THIS thimble-thief
Has ground to grief
Many a mighty poem,

No wiser for
The learned lore
He nibbles, tome by tome--

But though he'll munch
My words for lunch,
He never eats his own.

(Scroll down to find the answer.)

Answers to the Riddles

“O Little Bear!..."
Answer: Little Bear, Little Swan, Greenfinch and Snowflake are names of the goats in Johanna Spyri's 1881 novel Heidi. High in the Swiss Alps, where white snowfields last all year long and glow red in the evening sunlight, Heidi's grandfather raises her on the goats' nourishing milk.

Heidi, illustration by Jessie Willcox Smith

“This thimble thief..."
Answer: A bookworm.
This riddle is loosely adapted from an anonymous Old English riddle, copied ca. 975 in the Exeter Book.