My junior and senior high English teachers required the memorization of numerous poems… here are a few of the ones I remember:
Oh Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
How Do I Love Thee? by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Plus bits and pieces of longer poems…
“This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
TS Eliot - The Hollow Men
And some Shakespeare:
Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day
Macbeth Act 4 Scene 1
Thou art too like the spirit of Banquo. Down!
Thy crown does sear mine eye-balls. And thy hair,
Thou other gold-bound brow, is like the first.
A third is like the former. Filthy hags!
Why do you show me this? A fourth! Start, eyes!
What, will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?
Another yet! A seventh! I’ll see no more:
And yet the eighth appears, who bears a glass
Which shows me many more; and some I see
That two-fold balls and treble scepters carry:
Horrible sight! Now, I see, ’tis true;
For the blood-bolter’d Banquo smiles upon me,
And points at them for his.
and of course, ” Et tu, Brute?— Then fall, Caesar!”
And a song:
Oklahoma by Oscar Hammerstein II
There are probably a few more I’ve forgotten to list. Jami can you help me out here?
Besides the memorization there is one poem I specifically remember studying in college:
I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed by Emily Dickinson
I had to give an oral presentation on this poem in my World Lit class. Since that day in 1996, I can’t greet one spring day without thinking, “Inebriate of air am I, And debauchee of dew.”
What poetry did you memorize in school?
see, that’s why I love you (well, one of the many reasons)!
you fix stuff, you’re a coffee expert, and you are interested in time travel and rocket launches. . .and the list goes on!
Oh, and one of my favorite memorization passages was from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner–Coleridge.
Comment by Patricia Nichols — 6/30/2008 @ 5:20 am
Oh, and you pray for your friends! That’s a big one!
Comment by Patricia Nichols — 6/30/2008 @ 5:24 am
Here´s one we learned in middle school, actually. We were studying meter.
“This is the forest primeval.
The murmuring pines & the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, & in garments green,
indistinct in the twilight.”
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(1807-1882)
There is more to the poem, but this is the part I remember memorizing (if that makes any sense!)
Comment by Kelly — 6/30/2008 @ 6:27 am
Thanks Patti! You’re so kind.
Ahh The Rime of the Ancient Mariner… that’s the one I was trying to think of last night!
“Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.”
Comment by Amy — 6/30/2008 @ 7:45 am
How bout “Not waving but Drowning“
Comment by Jami Leigh — 6/30/2008 @ 2:11 pm
Or the “Raven” by Edgar Alan Poe
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary”
Comment by Jami Leigh — 6/30/2008 @ 2:20 pm
Ah yes, I often quote Not Waving But Drowning.
I looked at the Raven last night when I first wrote this post. Couldn’t remember if we memorized part of just studied it.
Comment by Amy — 6/30/2008 @ 2:34 pm
Perhaps we only memorized the first verse of the Raven
Comment by Jami Leigh — 7/1/2008 @ 9:00 am
I was also gonna say “The Raven”. And I remember learning “Birches” by Robert Frost. But my favorite poem that I memorized for school was “Trees” by Alfred Joyce Kilmer
Trees
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
Comment by roseykrh — 7/2/2008 @ 9:05 pm
God love that High School English Teacher! I remember some of those…although I don’t think I would have remembered as many as you and Jamie! Has anyone heard if she is still teaching? or has she retired? Did you guys have to write your own poem or ode? I remember mine…it was called “Ode to a long lost friend” Funny thing that ode…I found several copies of it after my mom passed away!
Comment by Delisha Webb — 7/3/2008 @ 10:29 am
Oh, I remember memorizing Trees too. Thanks!
Comment by Amy — 7/7/2008 @ 11:26 am