Memorizing Poems

Here are two wonderful poems I memorized tonight:

William Wordsworth
The World is Too Much With Us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The Winds that will be howling at all hours
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for every thing, we are out of tune;
It moves us not—Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn
Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

Edwin Arlington Robinson
Richard Cory

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him;

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favoured, 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.

Recitation is a fucking art. If you're really serious about it, you just realize one day that you're creating a kind of internal portfolio, and you love that. I need to add to mine. Right now I can recite:

Kubla Khan, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
After Apple Picking, Robert Frost
Fire and Ice, Robert Frost
Ozymandias, Percy Shelley
The World is Too Much With Us, William Wordsworth
Richard Cory, Edwin Arlington Robinson
Ye White Antarctic Birds of Upper 57th Street, Lisa Jarnot
Bad Morning, Langston Hughes

I used to know Robert Frost's Into My Own as well—it probably wouldn't be too hard to retrieve that one. Really, you just need to say them to yourself (as long as there's an obvious rhythm to them) over and over and you hold on to the language much longer than you'd expect. Next on my list are:

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, Dylan Thomas
It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free, William Wordsworth
The Tyger, William Blake

Anyone have any suggestions to add? Any they know and love to rattle off to a captive audience?