Shush, I'm thinking

Warm sunshine provided the opportunity to take the bikes out for a spin down to Centre City. A second-hand bookshop yielded some bargains but the library newspaper archives failed to come up with the goods this time.

Since my last visit 15 months ago the redevelopment of the museum district has been completed and I was gobsmacked to find myself looking up at one of the 28 original casts of The Thinker by Auguste Rodin.

A Philadelphia poet, Florence Earle Coates, described the experience thus

RODIN'S it was-this vital thing, this Soul,
This striving force imprisoned in clay,
This monster Shape inert, held in control
By that it doth enshrine:
Rodin's it was; but, ah, to-day
It is the world's-and mine!

I'll spare you the rest of this perfervid poem but the sculpture is indeed a magnificent lump of bronze. Rodin incidentally was the love object for many years of Pembrokeshire-born artist Gwen John who, as a young woman, became the model, muse and mistress of the much older and established sculptor.
Just another link (if a tenuous one) between Wales and Philadelphia. As was the cawl we had for supper.