Memorizing Poetry

Always was and always will be, being able to appreciate beauty may not make you a more useful worker bee but it will make your life better. My teachers in high school made the students memorize many passages from Homer, Dante, Shelley, Wordsworth, etc.

I still remember fondly this part from the Iliad:
"And so, luring the headlong Ares off the lines
Athena sat him down on Scamander's soft, sandy banks
while Argives bent the Trojans back. Each captain killed his man.
First Agamemnon lord of men
spilled the giant Odius, chief of the Halizonians
off his car - the first to fall, as he veered away
the spearhead punched his back between the shoulders
gouging his flesh and jutting out through his ribs -
He fell with a crash, and his armor clattered upon him.

Idomeneus cut down Phaestus, Maeonian Borus' son
who shipped to Troy from the good rich earth of Tarne.
As he tried to mount behind his team the famous spearman
stabbed a heavy javelin deep in his right shoulder-
he dropped from his war-car, gripped by the hateful dark."

checked

If you enjoy the series then yes--if not, kys.

If you really love a poem you read it over and over and naturally memorize it anyway

>english
>homeric greek
huh

I had this memorized for a while

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold,
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones;
Forget not: in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that rolled
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To Heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow
O'er all th' Italian fields where still doth sway
The triple tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundredfold, who having learnt thy way
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.

Poetry is a depreciated oral tradition that pseuds like to cling to as an "intellectual" pursuit despite it being effeminate and lame.

>t. brainlet pseud soyboy

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

This is the land of lost content
I see it shining plain
The happy highways where I went
and cannot come again.

OR

Had I the heavens embroidered clothes
Enwrought with golden and silver light
The blue and the dim and the dark clothes
Of night and light and of half-light
I would spread the clothes under your feet
But I, being poor, have only my dreams
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.

OR

April is the cruelest monthing, mixing
memory and desire, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead lands, stirring
dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
the earth in forgetful snow, feeding
a little life with dried tubers.
..
..

and other shit I've remembered from reading them over and over, I have a few fragments like

" And I am moved by fancies that are curled
around these images. And cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
infinitely suffering thing "

"I did not stop for death but he kindly stopped for me"

"A sudden blow, the great wings beating"

my memory sucks ass. I can only hold fragments.

had to memorize so much in school
some of the few I still remember:

Cattle dies
Kin dies
Oneself dies the same
But reputation
never dies
for those who get a good one

Cattle dies
Kin dies
Oneself dies the same
I know one thing
which never dies
the judgement of a dead man

-
Brothers will fight
and become each others' death
Siblings will
commit incest
Hard it is in the world
a great whoredom
An axe age, a sword age
shields are cloven
A wind age, a wolf age
before the world ends
No man will
spare another

-
That my mother said
that I should be bought
a ship and beautiful oars
Go abroad with vikings
Stand in the stern
Steer a dear vessel
Hold then to harbor
Hew down a man and another

> you share a thread with this creature

I memorized a couple short easy ones just for the hell of it. It doesn't take much effort.

Some say the world will end in fire
Some say in ice
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire
But if it had to perish twice
I think I know enough of hate
to say that for destruction ice
is also great
and would suffice

>tfw envious of the generations that came before
The use of computers has literally changed the physical structure of people's brains. It's significantly harder to memorize something today than it was when Homer could recite 10,000 lines from memory.

Oh mistress mine where are you roaming
Oh stay and hear your true love's coming
That can sing both high and low
Trip no further pretty sweeting
Journeys end in lovers meeting
Every wise man's son doth know

Good choices, user. Housman is one of my favorite poets to memorize and recite—along with Horace.

>look it up
>he actually believes this
Wow, he really had me fooled, all this time I thought Peter Hitchens was trust worthy and intelligent. Turns out he's just some kind of right wing kook though.

I can recite roughly ~50 short poems and the better part of Flight Of The Duchess. It's easy once you practice for a while, helpful as a memory exercise, and nice to have something pretty stuck in your head

With rue my heard is laden
for golden friends I had
For many a rose-lipt maiden
And many a light foot lad

By brooks too broad for leaping
the light foot boys are laid
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
in fields where roses fade

When my grandfather developed Alzheimer's he lost an awful lot, but it seemed like he suddenly remembered some poems he'd memorized when he was younger, and he'd just repeat them whenever he saw you. This is the one I remember best.

Last night I held a lovely hand,
It was so small and neat,
I thought my heart with joy would burst
So wild was every beat.

No other hand unto my heart
Could greater pleasure bring
Than the one so dear I held last night.
Four Aces and a King

IN my own shire, if I was sad,
Homely comforters I had:
The earth, because my heart was sore,
Sorrowed for the son she bore;
And standing hills, long to remain,
Shared their short-lived comrade’s pain
And bound for the same bourn as I,
On every road I wandered by,
Trod beside me, close and dear,
The beautiful and death-struck year:
Whether in the woodland brown
I heard the beechnut rustle down,
And saw the purple crocus pale
Flower about the autumn dale;
Or littering far the fields of May
Lady-smocks a-bleaching lay,
And like a skylit water stood
The bluebells in the azured wood.

Yonder, lightening other loads,
The seasons range the country roads,
But here in London streets I ken
No such helpmates, only men;
And these are not in plight to bear,
If they would, another’s care.
They have enough as ’tis: I see
In many an eye that measures me
The mortal sickness of a mind
Too unhappy to be kind.
Undone with misery, all they can
Is to hate their fellow man;
And till they drop they needs must still
Look at you and wish you ill.

Poem made me chuckle. It's good to have a humorous poem to remember your grandfather by. Oftentimes it's hard to remember the good times about a person if they suffer from Alzheimer's or dementia in their last years.

Was this meant to illustrate how shit elven poetry was?

Shakespeare sticks with me, it might not be proper verse, but certainly it's a thing musical.

O, why should wrath be mute, and fury dumb
I am no babe, I, that with base prayers
I should repent the evils I have done
Ten thousand worse than ever yet I did
Would I perform, if I might have my will
If one good deed in all my life I did
I do repent it from my very soul.

Well, no. That excerpt is a rendition by Bilbo as recalled by Sam, a simplified translation by hobbits for hobbits. If you want proper Elven verse you should read something like The Lay of Leithian.

So we'll go no more a roving,
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.

Nice rationalization for your shitty understanding of poetry. Keep believing that, bud.

Meeting with Time, "slack thing," said I,
"Thy scythe is dull. Whet it for shame."
"No marvel, Sir," He did reply,
"If it at length deserve some blame,
But where one man would have me grind it,
Twenty for one too sharp do find it."

Perhaps some such of old did pass,
Who above all things loved this life,
To whom thy scythe a hatchet was,
Which now is but a pruning knife.
Christ's coming has made man thy debtor,
Since by thy cutting he grows better.

And in his blessing thou art blessed,
For where thou only wert before
An executioner at best,
Thou art a gardener now and more,
An usher to convey our souls
Beyond the utmost stars and poles.

And this is that makes life so long,
While it detains us from our God.
Even pleasures here increase the wrong,
And length of days lengthens the rod.
Who wants the place where God doth dwell,
Partakes already half of Hell.

Of what strange length must that needs be,
Which even eternity excludes!
Thus fair Time heard me patiently
Then chafing said "This man deludes,
What do I hear before his door?
He doth not crave less time, but more."

-----

Having been tenant long to a rich lord
Not thriving, I resolvéd to be bold,
And make a suit unto him to afford
A new small-rented lease, and cancel the old.

In Heaven at his manor I him sought.
They told me there that he had lately gone.
About some land which he had dearly bought.
Long since on Earth to take possessiòn.

I straight returned and knowing his great birth,
Sought him accordingly in great resorts:
In cities, theatres, gardens, parks and courts.
At length I heard a ragged noise and mirth.

Of thieves and murderers there I him espied,
who straight "Your suit is granted," said and died.

She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

I know it's the plebe choice but fuck it's so gorgeous.

Here's what I used to memorize mine. If you want to be like the ancients, use the same tricks as them:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci

Make it a really familiar space, like a path you walk everyday or your childhood home.

'Twas brillig and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe
All mimsy were the borogoves
And the mome raths outgrabe