UKC

The two I can remember by heart are the moving but bleak ballad of 'The Twa Corbies' and the immortal lines by the American poet ee cummings..
' A politician is an arse everyone has sat upon apart from a man'

To qualify you have to remember the poem in it's entirety and noone under thirty need apply as you have yet to enter that halcyon age where remaining brain cells are outnumbered by remaining digits.
The winner can recite their poem in public on this forum!

In reply to doz:

There was an old man called Michael Finnegan
He grew whiskers on his chinnegan
The wind came out and blew them innegan
Poor old Michael Finnegan beginnegan
There was an old man......etc

In reply to doz:

Its .....

In reply to doz:
I really liked poetry at primary school (Late 50's) - we had a great wee book - An Anthology of British Poetry. One I recall in parts is the Masefield poem about ships - Dirty British Coaster with a salt caked smokestack, butting through the channel in the mad march days ...... Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir..... memory fails the rest. I am sure that enjoying these verses laid a foundation for a life-long appreciation of the poem. Just looked it up - Cargoes by Masefield.

In reply to keith-ratcliffe:


Wonderfully evocative. Those words have taunted my imagination for half a century.

Mick

In reply to Tom Valentine:

In days of old, when knights were bold,
Before women were invented,
men drilled holes in telegraph poles,
and had to be contented.

But the holes were rough and soon enough,
the men wouldn't stick owt in em,
and with his end all frayed Adam prayed,
"God! Can't we have some women?"

In reply to doz:

Milk,milk,lemonade,
Round the corner chocolates made.

In reply to Mick Ward:

Yes, right up there with Kubla Khan, another we learnt at school ...

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree ...

The whole poem's brilliant, and the original manuscript can be seen on one quite scruffy piece of paper in the British Museum.

And Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky takes some beating for evocativeness. Starts:

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Yep love Jabberwocky but still can't remember it all

In reply to keith-ratcliffe:

I love that poem, it's so evocative.

I never had to learn a single poem for school, but there are lots I can recite. I don't know why, but if I've read something a few times it tends to stick in my head very accurately.

I can recite To Autumn (Keats), An Irish Airman Foresees His Death, He Wishes For The Cloths of Heaven, and The Lake Isle of Innisfree (all Yeats), Daffodils (Wordsworth), Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day? (Shakespeare - can't remember the sonnet number), a few Seamus Heaney poems, At The Sign of the Prancing Pony (Tolkien), one very long poem about a wrecked ship and a man who ate all the crew which begins 'Twas on the shores that round our coast, from Deal to Ramsgate span...' which I'm not even sure who it's by, large parts of To His Coy Mistress (Marvell) and My Last Duchess (Browning), and a monologue from A Midsummer Night's Dream.... loads of other stuff too which I'm sure will come to me as I think about it some more.

I've made no effort to learn any of these and they are of no use to me whatsoever!

In reply to Alyson:
My first taste of poetry was being given one to remember then forced to recite it in front of class - cane behind the knees for mistakes! I can recall none of those. Then with a new teacher who asked us to choose a poem and remember one verse for delivery class front. That is where Cargoes comes from - it was a much better memory.

In reply to doz:

Don't care didn't care.
Don't care was hung
Don't care was put in the pot
and boiled til he was done.

In reply to doz:

Pied Beauty
Glory be to God for dappled things-
For skies of couple-colour as a branded cow.......

And

Eeper weeper chimbley sweeper,
Had a wife enut couldn't keep her
Had another, didn't love her,
Up the chimbley he did shove her.

In reply to Alyson:

>... they are of no use to me whatsoever!

You can stroll through, 'the oriental streets of thought...' You can live other lifetimes. Has this no value?

Mick

In reply to Mick Ward:

It does have a lot of value, though not practical value!

Ozymandias, that's another. I knew there were more. Adlestrop!

I love poetry, it's not a burden to carry it all up there in my head

In reply to Adam W.:

Or the amazing Windhover ('I caught this morning morning's minion' etc). I think Hopkins is probably about the greatest poet we've ever had ... well, since Shakespeare.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:










Burns can match it for evocative opening lines...

When chapmen billies leave the street
And drouthy neibors, neibors meet,
As market days are wearing late,
An folk begin to tak the gate
While we sit bousin at the nappy,
And gettin fou and unco happy,
We think na on the Lang Scots miles
The mosses, waters, slaps and styles
That lie between us and our hame
Whare sits our sulky sullen dame
Gathering her brows like gathering storm,
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm


I don't know the whole thing by heart though- though ive always said i'll learn it one day...


Gregor

In reply to doz:

A silly one I remember from Primary school. Not sure where it came from.

Under the spreading gooseberry bush the village burglar lies,
the burglar is a hairy man with whiskers round his eyes.

He goes to church on Sundays and hears the parson shout,
he puts a penny in the plate and takes a shilling out.

In reply to doz:

Reckless
"Last night I was reckless....
Didn't brush my teeth
Went to bed tasting my dinner all night
.......and it tasted good"

It was in a compilation book called "Tapestry" we studied in the first year or senior school.
I'm 45, so I hope this counts.

In reply to doz:

Worryingly...

Spike Milligan's : Liste de Tortures

The prisoner will be:
Bluned on ye Grunions
and krelled on his Grotts
Ye legges will be twergled
and pulled thru’ ye motts!

His Nukes will be Fongled
split thrice on yon Thulls
Then laid on ye Quottle
and hung by ye Bhuls!

Twice thocked on the Phneflic,
Yea broggled thrice twee.
Ye moggs wiIl be grendled
and stretched six foot three!

By now, if ye victim
show not ye sorrow,
Send him home. Tell him,
"Come back to-morrow"

------------------------------------

Though the one that stuck from higher English and still my favourite:

Snake by DH Lawrence


A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before
me.

He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of
the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
i o And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.

Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.

And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.

He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.

And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.

I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste.
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.

And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

And I thought of the albatross
And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.

Taormina, 1923

In reply to doz:

I was given a kit Kat by my first form teacher for learning The Night Train. I would get it all in the wrong order now I think but most of it is still there.
It always pops into my head when I'm heading for the Highlands up the M6, pulling up Beattock, a steady climb
the gradients against her but shes on time
Past cotton grass and moorland Boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder. . .

Andy

In reply to Removed User:

>Liste de Tortures<

Brilliant! Never heard that one before...
Love Lawrence's Snake...seriously impressed you can remember it all

In reply to Alyson:


You're just showing off!
Are you sure you are over thirty?

In reply to Andrew Wilson:

Of course Daffodils by Wordsworth, though now probably most hated of his poems, I much preferred Shelley though Old William does have a classic or two up his sleeve

'We Are Seven
BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
———A simple Child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?

I met a little cottage Girl:
She was eight years old, she said;
Her hair was thick with many a curl
That clustered round her head.

She had a rustic, woodland air,
And she was wildly clad:
Her eyes were fair, and very fair;
—Her beauty made me glad.

“Sisters and brothers, little Maid,
How many may you be?”
“How many? Seven in all,” she said,
And wondering looked at me.

“And where are they? I pray you tell.”
She answered, “Seven are we;
And two of us at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea.

“Two of us in the church-yard lie,
My sister and my brother;
And, in the church-yard cottage, I
Dwell near them with my mother.”

“You say that two at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea,
Yet ye are seven! I pray you tell,
Sweet Maid, how this may be.”

Then did the little Maid reply,
“Seven boys and girls are we;
Two of us in the church-yard lie,
Beneath the church-yard tree.”

“You run about, my little Maid,
Your limbs they are alive;
If two are in the church-yard laid,
Then ye are only five.”

“Their graves are green, they may be seen,”
The little Maid replied,
“Twelve steps or more from my mother’s door,
And they are side by side.

“My stockings there I often knit,
My kerchief there I hem;
And there upon the ground I sit,
And sing a song to them.

“And often after sun-set, Sir,
When it is light and fair,
I take my little porringer,
And eat my supper there.

“The first that dies was sister Jane;
In bed she moaning lay,
Till God released her of her pain;
And then she went away.

“So in the church-yard she was laid;
And, when the grass was dry,
Together round her grave we played,
My brother John and I.

“And when the ground was white with snow,
And I could run and slide,
My brother John was forced to go,
And he lies by her side.”

“How many are you, then,” said I,
“If they two are in heaven?”
Quick was the little Maid’s reply,
“O Master! we are seven.”

“But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!”
’Twas throwing words away; for still
The little Maid would have her will,
And said, “Nay, we are seven!”

In reply to doz:

Unfortunately I am, yes.

The only time I've considered it useful was learning lines for plays, which I could memorise in about 3 or 4 read-throughs. My 2-year-old loves books and has about a hundred or so and I know those word-for-word now too. The rhyming ones are the easiest - all the Julia Donaldson books are firmly ingrained in my head.

In reply to doz:



I hate to admit to cutting and pasting...

In reply to doz:

O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm that flies in the night
in the howling storm
Has found out thy bed of crimson joy
And his dark secret love does thy life destroy

It was in an anthology (rhyme and reason?) I did for o level.

Never really understood it at the time

In reply to Removed User:

Shocked...totally shocked....there was me thinking you were all honest, law-abiding folk
And you were a serious contender for first prize too....Russian doping at London olympics pales in comparison.....

In reply to doz:

No worst there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief;
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is thy comforting?
Mary, Mother of us, where is thy relief?
My cries heave, herds long,
Huddle in a main, a chief woe, world-sorrow.
On an age-old anvil wince and sing; then lull; then leave off.
Fury had shrieked No lingering! let me be fell, 'force I must be brief.

Oh the mind, mind has mountains. Cliffs of fall,
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed.
Hold them cheap may who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our
Small durance deal with that steep or deep.
Here, creep, wretch! Under a comfort serves in a whirlwind.
All life death does end, and each day dies with sleep.

You can tell I didn't cut and paste it because all the line breaks will be in the wrong place. Can also do Carrion Comfort and Binsey Poplars although not, sadly, the whole of the Wreck of the Deutschland. I am clearly a depressed adolescent or a Jesuit priest.

In reply to doz:
Amongst some genuinely finely crafted poetry I remember from school,I also recall being force fed the life and works of that ghastly Burns chap.

Didn't interest me in the slightest.

Those of you educated south of The Wall should be grateful you missed out on the 'Wee Timorous Beastie' .or whatever it was

In reply to doz:
Pitter pat
What was that?
Little raindrops on my hat.

JCW's first public appearance ca 1938 with photo dressed in bunny rabbit suit in the local paper.

In reply to Kate Smith:
And what about this incredible verse (verse 1 of 'God's Grandeur')? ...

God's Grandeur

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

[Just about the most powerful, most perfect verse I've ever read in the English language.]

In reply to doz:

The 'king view was 'king vile
For 'king miles and 'king miles...

OK, maybe not. But I did go to school in Wigan.

T.

In reply to doz:

My friend Billy,
Had a ten foot willy,
He showed it to the girl next door.
She thought it was a snake,
So she hit it with a rake,
And now it's only two foot four.

I have no recollection of this but apparently I came home from school aged 5 and recited it in dead pan fashion at the dinner table.

In reply to doz:

It seemed that out of battle I escaped.............

It was part of my English lit set text in 77 and I reckon I could do a pretty good attempt at it now.

Strange Meeting, Wilfred Owen

In reply to doz:

ABCD Golfish?
MNO Golfish.
SDR Golfish.
RDR Golfish.

(Think 2 Jamaicans in conversation.)

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:
T'was Brillo and the slimy pans
Did gyre and gimbal in the sink.
All mimsy were the char hagstands,
All pitted, green and pink.
....
Beware the soggy brandy snap.
....
And hast thou slain the Wabberjock?
Come to my pits my squeamish boy
O frabjous day, callooh, callay
He jortled in his cloy


Can't remember it all but some wag at school wrote this lampoon of the Jabberwocky back in the '70s.

In reply to doz:

Poetry at school just put me off it. I can vaguely remember some drivel about "Captain art thou sleeping?" but that's it, the batty teacher is more stuck in my mind.

The only poem I can remember I learnt much later and I dare say isn't great poetry but it does mean something to me.

In reply to doz:
The green eye of the little yellow God.

A bad choice of mine,it was long, but I did remember it on the day I had to recite it. ( I can remember quite a few lines even now )

( and Basking Shark)

In reply to toad:


I did that one too, and I've never been convinced by it either.

However, another Blake in the same school anthology I think (Voices) did stick and was the first poem that really resonated with me.

I went to the Garden of Love
And saw what I never had seen
A chapel was built in the midst
Where I used to play on the green

And the gates of this chapel were shut
And 'thou shalt not' writ over the door
So I turned from the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers had bore

And I saw it was filled with graves
And tombstones where flowers should be
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds
And binding with briars my joys and desires

Hmmm. You don't need to be Freud to work that one out!

In reply to doz:

I was heading up Ben Lomond one day, ( as I do many times a year) and a chap stopped me and asked me if I would like to hear a Chinese Proverb.

I said yes, and he delightedly whipped out a little book that seemed to have categories , and he recited one that had a mountain flavour . He closed the book, and with a brief goodby, we parted on our ways.

I cannot remember a word of the proverb, but I still delight myself in the memory of that day.

In reply to Jim C:


I think I could probably do most of that one too.

Of the others mentioned, I really liked the DH Lawrence 'Snake' as well as obviously* 'To his Coy Mistress' and the Masefield classics, Sea Fever and Cargoes. I think many of us were taught the same things, although I have to say that I now realise how appalling Eng Lit, especially poetry, was taught at our school.

*You only bother to pastiche things that you like.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Marvellous, I haven't actually read any of this for years, just know the ones I know and think of them as I walk along, so good to be reminded of others. My teacher when I was doing A-level English (in a chilly portakabin I remember well) read out 'No worst, there is none', then said she didn't like it much. I'd never heard anything like it before and couldn't see 'like' or 'not like' as a response that made any sense to something so intense.

In reply to Dave Garnett:

I'd forgotten all about that one!

In reply to doz:

What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.

In reply to doz:

Hedd wyn

https://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/hedd_wyn.html