Poems you know by heart

[MorpheusSandman]

Too many to name or to remember, but most of them are short. Of the longer ones I've memorized, I can think of:

-The opening paragraph of The Canterbury Tales' General Prologue
-Keats' To Autumn
-Frost's Design
-Yeats' Meru, A Dialogue of Self and Soul, Sailing to Byzantium, Byzantium
-Wallace Stevens' Plain Sense of Things and Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour
-Byron's She Walks in Beauty
-James Merrill's Christmas Tree
-Donne's Holy Sonnet XIV, Forbidden Mourning, Air and Angels
-Herbert's Prayer (I)

Surely others I'm forgetting

[Ecurb]

Hello, Morpheus. Good to see you back here.

I've memorized a great many long poems, including: "Prufrock", "The Highwayman", "The Ballad of East and West", "To His Coy Mistress", and "Jim Bludso", as well as many shorter poems. I probably couldn't rattle off all the long ones on command, but in about 3 or 4 minutes of study I could.

[MorpheusSandman]

Thanks, Ecurb.

I took "memorize" to mean "I could rattle them off on command." I don't know if I'd want to try to memorize a poem as long as Prufrock!

[Ecurb]

I've been able to rattle all of those long poems off on command at one time or another in my life -- but for some of them I'd need a quick refresher (I can still do Prufrock, especially if I go over it in my head one time before reciting). Of course I learned "To His Coy Mistress" in the hope that it would prove "useful" to me. It didn't (but I can still recite it on command).

I learned long poems by heart when I worked as a busboy in Yosemite National Park, years ago. Every trip back to the bus closet, I'd memorize the next two lines.

[MorpheusSandman]

Yeah, that makes sense. I'm sure as the years go by you lose the ability to rattle off poems you memorized a decade or two ago if you haven't recited it in years.

Ha! That's a good methodical way of memorizing poems! I've had to make monthly trips to the doctor for over a decade, and started taking poetry books with me and memorizing poems while I was there. Gives me something to do those times where they're behind schedule and I'm in the waiting room for 1.5 hours.

[Munshie]

YesNo

I can recall Wordworth's "I wandered lonely as a cloud" and a few others. I can still quote bits of Hamlet and Julius Caesar (even though it is nearly 50 years since I read them.)

Can I for a moment be more light-hearted? I remember an anonymous poem written back in the late 1960s/early 1970s that copied the style of the classic Twinkle twinkle little star poem.

Twinkle twinkle little star
Now we know exactly what you are
Nuclear furnace in the sky
You'll turn to ashes by and by.

Tick tick pulsating star
Nucelo-magnetic resonating ball
Making monkeys of us all.

Twinkle twinkle quasi-star
Now we wonder what you are
With such indecent energy
Didn't God say you couldn't be?

[Methinks]

Hard to believe, but Elliot's Wasteland. Struck such a cord with me in college that I memorized it for a class and have kept it in the mental vault ever since.

[Nikonani]

I'm working on memorizing a lot of Swinburne, largely because he's very easy to memorize. I'm working on some Wallace Stevens and Hart Crane as well. I can get by on some Hopkins and Tennyson.

In fact, I think it's fair to say I can recite a lot of The Bridge and Voyages by Crane.

[Citrouille]

Le Bateau ivre (Rimbaud, 100 verses)
Le Dormeur du Val (Rimbaud)
Ma Bohème (Rimbaud)
Les chercheuses de Poux (Rimbaud)
À la Musique (Rimbaud)
Les Conquérants de l’Or (Hérédia)
Les Conquérants (Hérédia, 800 verses)
Au Lecteur (Baudelaire)
Bénédiction (Baudelaire)
L’Albatros (Baudelaire)
Élévation (Baudelaire)
Correspondances (Baudelaire)
J’aime le souvenir de ces époques nues … (Baudelaire)
Le Flacon (Baudelaire)
L’Invitation au Voyage (Baudelaire)
À une Passante (Baudelaire)
Le Voyage (Baudelaire, 125 verses)
El Desdidacho (Nerval)
Dans les Bois (Nerval)
Fantaisie (Nerval)
Mon rêve familier (Verlaine)
L’Isolement (Lamartine)
Le Lac (Lamartine)
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Amor, cuantos Caminos (Pablo Neruda)
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Ulysses (Tennyson)
I sometimes hold it half a sin … (Tennyson)
A few stanzas of Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
To be or not to be (Shakespeare)
Fear no more (Shakespeare)
Dulce et Decorum (Owen)
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Я вас любил – I loved you (Pushkin)
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In Latin – first five verses of the Aenid (Virgil)


I love memorizing poetic texts.

[Asha Jane]

Poem (303) by Emily Dickinson stuck with me for three years, I eventually wrote this song based on quotes from it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1v7...&feature=share