Poems you've memorized

When I was in elementary school, we had to memorize and recite a poem a week in class. I still remember all of "The Embarrassing Episode of Little Miss Muffet," by Guy Wetmore Carryl, "Oh Captain, My Captain," by Walt Whitman, "Eletelephony," by Laura Richards and "The Tale of Custard the Dragon," by Ogden Nash.

Last time I found myself inside an MRI tube for nearly an hour, I recited to myself every line of Shakespeare and every poem I could remember to keep my claustrophobic self calm. No had one ever suggested that to me as a good reason to learn poetry when I was a student, but now I highly recommend it for that purpose!

Divina Commedia by Dante Alighieri

Oh, not the poem. The title. It rocks.

Okay, okay.

Frost's “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”

Ketzel said:

Last time I found myself inside an MRI tube for nearly an hour, I recited to myself every line of Shakespeare and every poem I could remember to keep my claustrophobic self calm.

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K.

My condolences. I used to ask for a Valium, but then I just got used to the environment. Well, until that jackhammer noise starts. If you can recite anything to yourself then, I anoint you Zen Master of the MRI

I memorized Gunga Din by Kipling in early high school to impress my peers, and it never left my head. It recites nicely out loud. I can still do it. Years and years later......

I suppose as kid, and a therefore captive audience,
I was called upon to memorize a prayer or two. Like this veritable
Grimm's Fairy Tale of a prayer:

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
If I shall die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen.

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This was for 5 year-olds?
If I die before I wake???
Are you kiddin' me?

dfwtinman said:

I suppose as kid, and a therefore captive audience,
I was called upon to memorize a prayer or two. Like this veritable
Grimm's Fairy Tale of a prayer:



This was for 5 year-olds?
If I die before I wake???
Are you kiddin' me?

Click to expand...

My mother changed it for us. She taught it this way:

Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
Guide me through the starry night
And wake me with the morning light.

Ketzel said:

When I was in elementary school, we had to memorize and recite a poem a week in class. I still remember all of "The Embarrassing Episode of Little Miss Muffet," by Guy Wetmore Carryl, "Oh Captain, My Captain," by Rudyard Kipling, "Eletelephony," by Laura Richards and "The Tale of Custard the Dragon," by Ogden Nash.

Last time I found myself inside an MRI tube for nearly an hour, I recited to myself every line of Shakespeare and every poem I could remember to keep my claustrophobic self calm. No had one ever suggested that to me as a good reason to learn poetry when I was a student, but now I highly recommend it for that purpose!

Click to expand...

O Captain, My Captain was one of my favorite poems. I memorized it myself. I had a poetry book my mom had given me for Christmas when I was fifteen, 101 Famous Poems. I loved a lot of those poems in that book.

I was on a train and had to stand up as all the seats where taken. I started to go trough a poem (Öppna och slutna rum by Tranströmer) and I had remembered it without trying. I had just read it so many damn times that it wouldn't go away. It was stuck.

The mind is realy marvelous. I gathered strength for what was happening in secret, this poem coming to life, the secret treasury hidden from sight. I could at any time bring up this exceptional poetry and become invigourated and reminded of beauty.

I soon discovered that I remembered two other poems as well (Romanska bågar, and Paret). It realy cheers me up, it makes it's point by saying to me "do not forget life." Any forgetful day I know I have this treasure.

There are only two that I've really memorized:

Il pleure dans mon coeur
Comme il pleut sur la ville ;
Quelle est cette langueur
Qui pénètre mon cœur ?

Ô bruit doux de la pluie
Par terre et sur les toits !
Pour un cœur qui s'ennuie
Ô le chant de la pluie !

Il pleure sans raison
Dans ce coeur qui écœure.
Quoi ! nulle trahison ?...
Ce deuil est sans raison.

C'est bien la pire peine
De ne savoir pourquoi
Sans amour et sans haine
Mon cœur a tant de peine!

P.Verlaine(1844-1896)


I know I am but summer to your heart,
And not the full four seasons of the year;
And you must welcome from another part
Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear.
No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell
Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing;
And I have loved you all too long and well
To carry still the high sweet breast of Spring.
Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes,
I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums,
That you may hail anew the bird and rose
When I come back to you, as summer comes.
Else will you seek, at some not distant time,
Even your summer in another clime.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

I don't know what it is about them, but they've just been stuck in my head and heart for years now. It's hard for me to memorize things; it takes a lot of effort. So yeah

Ha! Cool topic. I just came from putting my baby to sleep, and I had to carry him around and hum to him twice as long as usual and my arms were hurting (he's huge) and it was driving me nuts wondering how long it would take, so I recited "The Windhover" by Gerard Manley Hopkins in my head to keep my mind off it. I don't think I even memorized "The Windhover" on purpose, I think I just read it enough times, trying to figure out how the darn sentences fit together, mostly because I wanted to be able to read it out loud properly & with expression. It's funny that's the only one I could actually remember tonight although there's others I've memorized on purpose.

In the past, I've had entire Shakespeare plays memorized because I was in them. And I've also periodically memorized long monologues. Not sure how much I could recite now . . .

I've memorized a lot of other poetry too, but forgotten most of it. The three more contemporary poems that come to mind that I still know by heart are "Resume" (Dorothy Parker), "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening" (Robert Frost), and "Jabberwocky" (Lewis Carroll).

"Jabberwocky" was the only one I memorized intentionally, for school (along with many others I now forget), though this should not be taken as a sign I did not enjoy the memorization. The other two just stuck in my head.

Stray Cat by Francis Witham. Still chokes me up.

Cats no less liquid than their shadows by A.S.J. Tessimond. So true.

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.


etc.


and because I dig Alfreds, the love song of. Also memorized several parts of a couple plays, Big daddy!!

'Twas brillig and the slitly toves...
-Lewis Carroll

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold...
-Robert W. Service

For sixty years the pine lumber barn...
-Carl Sandburg

Sometimes, riding in a car, in Wisconsin
-Robert Bly

I'll think of more.

More Coleridge:

In Kologne, a town of monks and bones
and pavements fanged with murderous stones
and rags and hags and hideous wenches….
etc & so forth.

More than anything else, I love the way those words come off your tongue. Murderous stones. Mmmm.

I do still know the whole thing, but it's not nearly so long as Kublai Khan. (beware, beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! For he on honeydew hath fed and drunk the milk of paradise.)

My dad's idea of bedtime stories was recitations of poetr with no elucidation, no matter how esoteric. I think it was a huge gift.

It gets harder as you get older, though. At the moment, I'm loving some of Andrea Gibson's poetry. And I still really like Jo Walton's "Doing laundry on the last day of the world."

ETA: My dad would have hated it. It doesn't rhyme.

When I was 10 I memorized Oliver Wendell Holmes' The Wonderful One Hoss Shay (The Deacons Masterpiece)

"All at once, and nothing first, —
Just as bubbles do when they burst."

Although looking at it now, I'm pretty sure it must have been a truncated version – there's no way I could have memorized that entire thing. And except for those last lines, it's pretty much gone from my memory.

In high school, for some reason, Shelly's Ozymandias
And Wilford Owens' Dulce et Decorum Est
And Rupert Brooke's The Great Lover

Later on, and still one of my all-time favorite poems, Yeats'

When You Are Old

"When you are old and grey and full of sleep . . ."

All the rest I don't have letter perfect any more but I can get pretty darn close.

In 5th grade I memorized "The Road Not Taken" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee." I'm in my 30's now and know them both perfectly. But I'm sure if I memorized a poem now I wouldn't remember it for 20+ years... my brain just doesn't hold on to stuff as well as it did in childhood... I think I might be running out of space up there

I've got a bunch of poems memorized but don't know the exact number (35? 50?), exactly for the reason the OP mentioned: I used to use them to pass the time while in line at the bank, or wherever. They also helped get me through labor.

Nowadays, I'm more likely to run scenes from my WIP in my head when I'm stuck somewhere, but I still use the poems for other things. Like running--rhythmic poets like Housman are great for helping to set pace. Or occasionally to focus my mind so I can get to sleep.

Poets (some single poems, some several) include: Housman, Owen, Robinson, Rossetti (both), Arnold, Wyatt, Shelley, Byron, Tennyson, Yeats, de la Mare, Noyes, Shakespeare, Plath, Parker, Sassoon, Dickinson, Frost, Marvell, Hopkins--just whatever I read, liked, and decided to keep with me.

When feeling bitter, I recite "This Be The Verse" by Philip Larkin to myself. Or Robert Frost's "Fire and Ice" which seems oddly prophetic these days. And for the melancholy mood that comes with feeling older, "Otherwise" by Jane Kenyon.

I memorized a few poems when I was a kid for fun. Like a couple other people have mentioned, I use them to pass the time when there's nothing else to do, on long car trips and so forth. The main ones I still remember:

The Ballad of East and West by Rudyard Kipling
The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes
Bugle Song by Tennyson
Stopping by Woods on a Snow Evening by Robert Frost (I think it's interesting that several other people mentioned this one too!)
The Chambered Nautilus by Oliver Wendell Holmes

... and a few other short ones. At one point I knew W.S. Gilbert's Ellen McJones Aberdeen too, but you can probably see what made this one difficult to stick in my head. (Can still do the first few stanzas, though!)

I've known The House That Jack Built since I was 8. And I've only just turned 5X.

There was another one I memorized when I was about 10. It's a parody of the nightly Now I lay me down to sleep prayer, simply called The Study Prayer:

Now I lay me down to study,
I pray the Lord I don't go nutty,
And if I fail to learn this junk,
I pray the Lord I do not flunk, (glad it's online because I always forget this part!)
And if I die, don't bury me at all,
Just lay my bones in the study hall,
And pile my books upon my chest,
And tell my teachers I did my best,
So now I lay me down to rest,
And pray I pass tomorrow's test,
And if I die before I wake,
That's one less test I'll have to take.