Chapter 15
In This Chapter
Stretching your mind by memorizing poetry
Challenging your family and friends in a poetry-memorizing competition
In this chapter, we give you ten poems worth permanently installing in your brain. Practice reading them aloud. Have memorization parties. Give prizes to those who can memorize “Kubla Khan,” the longest poem here. Give a grand prize to anyone who can memorize the whole list.
Sonnet 73 by William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
“A Crown Of Sonnets Dedicated to Love #1” by Lady Mary Wroth (1587?–1651?)
In this strange labyrinth, how shall I turn?
Ways are on all sides, while the way I miss.
If to the right hand, there in love I burn;
Let me go forward, therein danger is.
If to the left, suspicion hinders bliss;
Let me turn back, shame cries I ought return,
Nor faint, though crosses with my fortunes kiss.
Stand still is harder, although sure to mourn.
Thus let me take the right- or left-hand way,
Go forward or stand still or back retire.
I must these doubts endure without allay
Or help, but travel find for my best hire.
Yet that which most my troubled sense doth move —
Is to leave all, and take the thread of Love.
Psalm 23 (King James Version, 1611)
The Lord is my shepherd;
I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;
He leadeth me beside still waters;
He restoreth my soul.
He leadeth me in paths of righteousness
For his name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death,
I fear no evil,
For thou art with me;
Thy rod and thy staff,
They comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me
In the presence of my enemies.
Thou anointest my head with oil;
My cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and kindness shall follow me
All the days of my life,
And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
Forever.
Three Haiku by Chiyo (1703–1775)
After a long winter, giving
each other nothing, we collide
with blossoms in our hands.
Don’t dress for it.
The moon will transfigure —
those darling rags.
Once my parents were older
than I, still children,
same cicadas.
“The Tyger” by William Blake (1757–1828)
Tyger, Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger, Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
“Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And ’mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
When was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honeydew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
Poem 986 by Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
A narrow Fellow in the Grass
Occasionally rides —
You may have met Him — did you not
His notice sudden is —
The Grass divides as with a Comb —
A spotted shaft is seen —
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on —
He likes a Boggy Acre
A Floor too cool for Corn —
Yet when a Boy, and Barefoot —
I more than once at Noon
Have passed, I thought, a Whip lash
Unbraiding in the Sun
When stooping to secure it
It wrinkled, and was gone —
Several of Nature’s People
I know, and they know me —
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality —
But never met this Fellow
Attended, or alone
Without a tighter breathing
And Zero at the Bone —
“Spring and Fall” by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
To a Young Child
Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves, líke the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Áh! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
“Sea Rose” by H.D. (1886–1961)
Rose, harsh rose,
marred and with stint of petals,
meagre flower, thin,
sparse of leaf,
more precious
than a wet rose,
single on a stem —
you are caught in the drift.
Stunted, with small leaf,
you are flung on the sand,
you are lifted
in the crisp sand
that drives in the wind.
Can the spice-rose
drip such acrid fragrance
hardened in a leaf?
“One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979)
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
— Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love), I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.