Photo by My Father |
The act of memorizing a long piece of poetry or prose is a commitment. But once done, it is available for years, perhaps decades. Of the longer pieces of poetry or prose you have committed to memory, perhaps for public speaking contests, monologues in plays, or just for sport, which has been the most meaningful?
Because I use them regularly presiding at funerals Ecclesiastes 3 (For everything there is a season) and Romans 8:37-38 (I am convinced that neither death, nor life... will separate us from the love of our Lord, Christ Jesus) I have committed to memory. Also several Psalms for various occasions like 91, 120, 88.
ReplyDeleteTo an Athlete Dying Young, by A.E. Houseman. It's resonance comes around all too often.
ReplyDeleteA wise old owl lived in and oak
ReplyDeleteThe more he listen the less he spoke
The less he spoke the more he heard.
Why can't we all be like that wise old bird?
PA
Have recently memorized "I Follow a Noble Father" by Edgar A. Guest, because my father is 95-years-old and want to be prepared for his eventual funeral. Also memorized "I Went to the Woods to Live Deliberately" by Henry David Thoreau, because of my decades long affair w/ nature. As a lifelong traditional Methodist, I've not only memorized The Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalms, but also quite a few of the old hymns.
ReplyDeleteI grow old, I grow old / I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled / Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? / I shall wear white flannel trousers as I walk upon the beach / I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
ReplyDelete(Or something like that)
-- T. S. Elliot
Masonic ritual. Everything we do was handed down from an older generation, cared for by a present generation, and passed along exactly the next generation. Of these, the most important is the Funeral Ritual. It is important not for us, but for our departed and his family and friends.
ReplyDelete"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by the poet represented in the excellent black and white photograph heading this post.
ReplyDeleteMe too! And I recite it (to myself) whenever I'm in the woods in the winter. Ironically, Frost wrote the poem in June.
DeleteGaily bedight,
ReplyDeleteA gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.
But he grew old—
This knight so bold—
And o’er his heart a shadow—
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.
And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow—
‘Shadow,’ said he,
‘Where can it be—
This land of Eldorado?’
‘Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,’
The shade replied,—
‘If you seek for Eldorado!’
The Tyger, of course!
ReplyDeleteThe wheel is turning and you can’t slow down
ReplyDeleteYou can’t let go and you can’t hold on
You can’t go back and you can’t stand still
If the thunder don’t get you the lightning will!
Robert Hunter
There it is. Bravo.
DeleteThere are many, but I think "Richard Cory" by Edwin Arlington Robinson would be tough to beat. It was turned into a song by Simon and Garfunkel, and was also the favorite of the great actor Richard Burton. Message: people really don't know anything about each other.
ReplyDeleteWhenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
“Antigonish” It is my most meaningful piece because I never heard “What the author was really saying was....” in any conversation related to this poem and for me that makes it unique.
ReplyDeletePoetry for my son, which I began when he was three as a nightly ritual...Invictus, by William Henley, to give him strength when bullied. Trees, by Joyce Kilmer, to remind him of the beauty of God’s creation. The Road Not Taken, for faith in the path less traveled and individual decisions made. Winken, Blinken and Nod, by Eugene Field, to bring rest!
ReplyDeleteLord’s Prayer, Doxology, 23rd Psalm of course for Sunday!
I am working on memorizing "Ithaca" by C.P. Cavafy. (the English translation) It really touches me.
ReplyDelete"It Can Be Done," by Edgar Guest; "If," by Kipling. Patrick Henry's "Liberty or Death" speech. The books of Ephesians and James, various Psalms.
ReplyDeleteOnce had the privilege of listening to General Hal Moore recite most of Kipling's "Gunga Din" from memory. It was a favorite of his.
Goodnight Moon, read countless times with my daughter :)
ReplyDeleteDylan Thomas, Fern Hill
ReplyDeleteNow as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark
What about song lyrics? We see Robert Hunter is already mentioned. Somebody must be a Bob Dylan (he the Nobel laureate) fan? (Dylan once said, among his collaborators, Hunter was the only one who he allowed to make changes “without question”).
ReplyDeleteDon’t forget Chuck Berry. Here’s a partial from “Promised Land...”
Somebody help get out of Louisiana
Help me get to Houston town
There’s people there who care a little bit about me
And they won’t let the poor boy down
Sure as you’re born they bought me a silk suit
Put luggage in my hand
And I woke up flying over Albuquerque
On a jet to the promised land
Workin’ on a T-bone steak a la carte’ (!)
Flying over to the Golden State
The pilot told us in thirteen minutes
We’d be head in at the terminal gate
Swing low sweet chariot
Come down easy
Taxi to the terminal zone
Cut your engines and cool your wings
Let me make it to the telephone
Los Angeles!
Give me Norfolk Virginia
Tidewater four ten oh nine
Tell the folks back home this is the promised land calling
And the poor boy’s on the line!
Most of the church service Rite 1 flows from memory at the appropriate moments but I couldn't begin to say it outside of church. Many of the hymns are mostly memorized but that part of my brain only works at church, apparently.
ReplyDeleteThe only poem I have publicly recited begins with, "There are strange things done in the midnight sun," but I can't say I've memorized it. I've tried to learn "Rosamunde" in German but the incentive really isn't there. Mox nix.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
ReplyDeletePs 23 (KJV)
The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales
“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. "Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.”
ReplyDeleteand
"I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth."
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Stopping by woods on a snowy evening.
ReplyDelete"The Road Not Taken" has always had special meaning for me, causes me to choke up and a tear in my eye:
ReplyDeleteTwo roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
An interesting take on that poem: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/09/11/the-most-misread-poem-in-america/
DeleteA silly one that I heard as a child:
ReplyDeleteIn the middle of the day one summer's night two dead brothers got up to fight.
They faced each other back to back, drew their swords and shot each other,
But a deaf policeman heard the noise and came to rescue the poor dead boys.
"I like to have a martini, Two at the most, After three I'm under the table, after four I'm under my host." Dorothy Parker
ReplyDelete“If” by Rudyard Kipling
ReplyDeleteI have loved Haiku ever since I discovered it as a teenager and already loving a minimalistic and simple lifestyle. that set me apart from my peers. but it has treated me well and kept my monkey mind calm on some very turbulent seas.
ReplyDeletehere is one I especially love from Matsuo Basho.
Sitting quietly
doing nothing
Spring comes
and the grass grows by itself.
After Apple-Picking by Robert Frost in 6th Grade.
ReplyDeleteBest Regards,
Heinz-Ulrich
The Charge of the Light Brigade
ReplyDeleteBY ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
I
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
II
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
III
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.
IV
Flashed all their sabres bare,
Flashed as they turned in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wondered.
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right through the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reeled from the sabre stroke
Shattered and sundered.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.
V
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell.
They that had fought so well
Came through the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
VI
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!
Psalm 23 (KJV), the Apostles' Creed (BCP 1662), and the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence.
ReplyDeleteFrom the Rime of the Ancient Mariner:
ReplyDeleteFarewell, farewell
but this I tell To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.
So, so, so many. With a father who recited poetry endlessly at the dinner table, we 3 siblings sponged it up. One in particular held his firmest lesson for us kids.
ReplyDeleteOpportunity
-Edward Rowland Sill
This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream:
There spread a cloud of dust along a plain;
And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged
A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords
Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince's banner
Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes.
A craven hung along the battle's edge,
And thought, "Had I a sword of keener steel —
That blue blade that the king's son bears — but this
Blunt thing!" He snapped and flung it from his hand,
And lowering crept away and left the field.
Then came the king's son, wounded sore bested,
And weaponless, and saw the broken sword
Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand,
And ran and snatched it, and with battle-shout
Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down
And saved a great cause that heroic day.
One more ultimate favorite.
ReplyDeleteTell Me A Story
-Robert Penn Warren
[ A ]
Long ago, in Kentucky, I, a boy, stood
By a dirt road, in first dark, and heard
The great geese hoot northward.
I could not see them, there being no moon
And the stars sparse. I heard them.
I did not know what was happening in my heart.
It was the season before the elderberry blooms,
Therefore they were going north.
The sound was passing northward.
[ B ]
Tell me a story.
In this century, and moment, of mania,
Tell me a story.
Make it a story of great distances, and starlight.
The name of the story will be Time,
But you must not pronounce its name.
Tell me a story of deep delight.
I am not sure if my choice is significant and I certainly haven't memorized it as I have never been able to memorize anything except The Lord's Prayer, but one poem that settles in my mind and recalls the imaginative and magical world of childhood which we as adults too easily forget is Eugene Field's Wynken, Blynken and Nod which starts:
ReplyDeleteWynken, Blyken and Nod one night
Sailed off in a wooden shoe,--
Sailed on a river of crystal light
Into a sea of dew...
"Where are you going and what do you wish?"
the old moon asked the three
We have come to fish for the herring fish
That live in this beautiful sea.
Nets of silver and gold have we
Said Wynken, Blyken and Nod.
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
ReplyDeleteAs the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea! Chambered Nautilus Oliver Wendell Holmes
Honor Men by James Hay. Any good 'Hoo prob has memorized it.
ReplyDelete'Rime of The Ancient Mariner' for the annual public speaking requirement for all boys in my 'pre-prep' days at The Fenn School in Concord, Mass. in the sixties. It was a pretty terrifying thing to deliver a poem before the assembled schoolboys and faculty, one or more of us each day at assembly. But overall a good thing and one year I delivered my favorite short one by e.e cummings: "Buffalo Bill's". I believe the school still require it of all boys as well as an extemporaneous speech on a topic assigned shortly before delivery.
ReplyDeleteThe world is charged with the grandeur of God.
ReplyDeleteIt will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs...
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
And another regrettable thing about death
ReplyDeleteis the ceasing of your own brand of magic,
which took a whole life to develop and market —
the quips, the witticisms, the slant
adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,
their tears confused with their diamond earrings,
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,
their response and your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone. The memories packed
in the rapid-access file. The whole act.
Who will do it again? That's it: no one;
imitators and descendants aren't the same.
Perfection Wasted, John Updike
Snow by Anne Sexton. It closes with:
ReplyDeleteThere is hope
There is hope everywhere
Today god brings milk
And I have the pail.
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
ReplyDeleteAnd treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
Charles E. Carryl
ReplyDeleteRobinson Crusoe's Story
THE night was thick and hazy
When the "Piccadilly Daisy"
Carried down the crew and captain in the sea;
And I think the water drowned 'em;
For they never, never found 'em, 5
And I know they didn't come ashore with me.
Oh! 'twas very sad and lonely
When I found myself the only
Population on this cultivated shore;
But I've made a little tavern 10
In a rocky little cavern,
And I sit and watch for people at the door.
I spent no time in looking
For a girl to do my cooking,
As I'm quite a clever hand at making stews; 15
But I had that fellow Friday,
Just to keep the tavern tidy,
And to put a Sunday polish on my shoes.
I have a little garden
That I'm cultivating lard in, 20
As the things I eat are rather tough and dry;
For I live on toasted lizards,
Prickly pears, and parrot gizzards,
And I'm really very fond of beetle-pie.
The clothes I had were furry, 25
And it made me fret and worry
When I found the moths were eating off the hair;
And I had to scrape and sand 'em,
And I boiled 'em and I tanned 'em,
Till I got the fine morocco suit I wear. 30
I sometimes seek diversion
In a family excursion
With the few domestic animals you see;
And we take along a carrot
As refreshment for the parrot, 35
And a little can of jungleberry tea.
Then we gather as we travel,
Bits of moss and dirty gravel,
And we chip off little specimens of stone;
And we carry home as prizes 40
Funny bugs, of handy sizes,
Just to give the day a scientific tone.
If the roads are wet and muddy
We remain at home and study,—
For the Goat is very clever at a sum,— 45
And the Dog, instead of fighting,
Studies ornamental writing,
While the Cat is taking lessons on the drum.
We retire at eleven,
And we rise again at seven; 50
And I wish to call attention, as I close,
To the fact that all the scholars
Are correct about their collars,
And particular in turning out their toes.
Sea Fever, by John Masefield.
ReplyDeleteI second this one!
DeleteMemorizing? More likely "mis-memorizing" in my case, however, there are plenty of snippets that aid me in moving from one experience to the next. In the days since this topic was posted, I've become aware of how much I communicate with myself through the imagery, symbols, and my undoubtedly faulty recall of others' words. While they are all meaningful to me, parts of The Kingdom I (I think) by Louis MacNeice emerged in response to recent events. Maybe someone who is a better researcher than I will find the full text online. (Must have donated my copy in one of many relocation purges.)
ReplyDeleteEqual in difference, interchangeably sovereign [...]
The pairs of hands that are peers of hearts, the eyes that marry with eyes [...]
These, as being themselves, are apart from not each other
But from such as being false are merely other,
So these are apart as parts within a pattern
Not merged nor yet excluded, members of a Kingdom
Which has no king except each subject, therefore
Apart from slaves and tyrants and from every
Community of mere convenience; these are
Apart from those who drift and those who force,
Apart from partisan order and egotistical anarchy [...]
These are humble and proud at once, working within
their limits and yet transcending them. These are the
people who vindicate the species. And they are many [...]
By the rude bridge that arched the flood, their flag to April's breeze unfurled
ReplyDeleteEmbattled Farmers stood and fired, the shot heard 'round the world.
The Concord Hymn, by Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Concord Diaspora
Paul Revere's Ride by Longfellow and The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. Loved reading these aloud with my students. I remember the "sound effects" the kids made to mimic horse hooves - tapping on desks with their fingertips. No technology needed.
ReplyDeleteThere are many poems, short and long, that I memorized at the boys' school I went to aeons ago, and some of them were done for recitation competitions on School Day or Old Boys' Day, and others, simply for class at the behest of the English Master. But the first poem that comes to mind is this elegiac beauty by Constantine (C.P.) Cavafy, the great poet of Alexandria, whom Lawrence Durrell quoted in his novel tetralogy, The Alexandria Quartet. The poem is included at the end of the first novel, Justine. Here it is:
ReplyDeleteThe God Abandons Antony
Translated from the Greek by Rae Dalven
When suddenly at the midnight hour
an invisible troupe is heard passing
with exquisite music, with shouts––
do not mourn in vain your fortune failing you now,
your works that have failed, the plans of your life
that have all turned out to be illusions.
As if long prepared for this, as if courageous,
bid her farewell, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all do not be fooled, do not tell yourself
it was only a dream, that your ears deceived you;
do not stoop to such vain hopes.
As if long prepared for this, as if courageous,
as it becomes you who are worthy of such a city;
approach the window with firm step,
and listen with emotion, but not
with the entreaties and complaints of the coward,
as a last enjoyment listen to the sounds,
the exquisite instruments of the mystical troupe,
and bid her farewell, the Alexandria you are losing.
The last paragraph of Lincoln‘s second inaugural address (“with malice toward none”) and the first page of two of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
ReplyDeleteTwo not so long poems. Dickinson says so much with so little:
ReplyDeleteTo make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee.
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.
And, I always get one word wrong, no matter how many times I check and repeat it to myself, but here it is anyway - Longfellow:
The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveller hastens toward the town,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands,
Efface the footprints in the sands,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveller to the shore,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.