If you've read The History of Love, you'll recall the story about the age of glass, where everyone believed a part of himself to be extremely fragile.

In a college English class years ago, we had to at one point recite a poem from memory. I picked Yeats' Brown Penny, partly because I think it's my favorite poem, and partly (mostly) because it was the shortest one I could find that still met the length requirement of the assignment.