Twinkle, Twinkle...

If a picture paints a thousand words... then why can't I paint you? No, that's not right at all - this is not a Telly Savalas shrine! What I meant to say was, whilst images may be incredibly powerful - conveying as they do messages in content, style, form and medium - a word, like scents, may be a key to unlock a treasury of memories.

For reasons which, though recent, I have already forgotten, I was looking up the word "vivific" (which means, incidentally, "Life-giving, enlivening, vivifying" according to the OED) and suddenly remembered a little rhyme my grandfather taught me, a variation on "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star", which goes like this...

Scintillate, scintillate
Globule vivific,
Fain would I fathom
Thy nature specific.
Loftily poised
In the ether capacious
Strongly resembling
A gem carbonaceous.

And again, thanks to the internet I now know where he got it from: one John Raymond Carson. (though when he wrote it I don't know)

Aw! Isn't that nice?