‘The little reed, bending to the force of the wind, soon stood upright again when the storm had passed over.’ ~ Aesop, from ‘The Oak and the Reed’, Fable 127 of Aesop’s Fables

A quick google and a read of the article on Wikipedia about Aesop’s fable revealed that the comparison between the flexible reed and the strong but inflexible oak is a very old one. Confucius is credited with the saying, ‘The green reed that bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak that breaks in a storm’, and Geoffrey Chaucer wrote ‘A reed before the wind lives on, while mighty oaks do fall’ in Troilus and Criseyde. It’s a thought-provoking idea but, personally, what appealed to me most about these reeds was the beauty of their form, whether standing tall and upright or swaying in the breeze.