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Quote of the Day: The First Eighteen Lines
I know many of you know them by heart. I’ve seen some of you say so, on Ricochet, over the past nine years. At some point in your lives, you probably had them thrust at you; you might have struggled through them; maybe you cheated with the Cliffs Notes; perhaps you said you couldn’t possibly figure them out; you didn’t believe you could just “read them out loud” and understand them; and when you did, you couldn’t quite believe that your mouth, and your larynx had made such weird sounds; perhaps you memorized them; and very likely you either hated, or you loved, your taskmaster and teacher.
I loved my teacher of forty years ago. And a couple of years after the class in which all of the above thoughts ran through my mind at one point or another, we married each other. I don’t know how far we’ll get into the next forty together, but we’ve had a pretty good run. And now, it’s April again, the Ram has run his “half-course,” the world is greening, and, as happens every year at this time, I’m reminded.
This is for Frank. And Geoffrey. With whom hyt alle bigan. With love.
Loose translation, by She: When April, with its sweet showers has watered and wet down March’s drought, all the way to the roots, and every leaf is bathed in the water of life, the power of which begets the flowers: When the sweet breath of the West Wind has breathed life into the tender leaves in every wood and meadow, and the young Sun has run half his course in the Sign of the Ram. And little birds sing tunefully and sleep at night with their eyes open, so full are their hearts with Nature and life. Then, folks long to take pilgrimages, some seeking journeys to foreign shrines in far-away and sundry lands; but especially from every part of England, pilgrims find their way to Canterbury, where they seek the shrine of the holy, blessed martyr who helped them when they were sick.
Is there a piece of poetry or prose you love so much that you’ve memorized it for life? Please share.
Published in Literature
Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie
Glad did I live and gladly die
And I lay me down with a will
This be the verse you grave for me
Here he lies where he longs to be
Home is the sailor, home from the sea
And the hunter home from the hills
-Robert Louis Stevenson
I typed that from memory, and I just checked it for accuracy. I’m proud to say that the only thing I got wrong other than the punctuation was that it should be “I laid me down”. Not bad, not bad at all!
Thank you @She for giving me an excuse to spout all my memorized poems. A few more will be forthcoming.
Maybe the greatest epitaph ever.
When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state
and trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
and look upon myself and curse my fate.
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope
featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
with what I most enjoy contented least.
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
like to the lark at break of day arising
from sullen earth sings hymns at heaven’s gate.
For of thy sweet love such remembrance brings,
that I would scorn to trade my state with kings.
Then you need to hear this if you have not already: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaBNUzVSnj8
Then there’s this:
Owe war sint verswunden alliu mîniu jâr!
ist mir mîn leben getroumet, oder ist ez wâr?
daz ich ie wânde, daz iht wære, was daz iht?
dar nâch hân ich geslâfen und enweiz es niht.
nû bin ich erwachet und ist mir unbekant,
daz mir hie vor was kündic als mîn ander hant.
liute unde lant, danne ich von kinde bin gezogen,
die sint mir worden frœmde, reht als ob ez sî gelogen.
die mîne gespilen wâren, die sint træge unt alt.
bereitet ist daz velt, verhouwen ist der walt.
wan daz daz wazzer fliuzet als ez wîlent flôz,
für wâr, ich wânde, mîn ungelücke wurde grôz.
mich grüezet maniger trâge, der mich bekande ê wol,
diu welt ist allenthalben ungenaden vol.
There’s more to it but I only memorised that much.
Translation:
Woe, whither have flown all my years?
Did I only dream my life or was it real?
Was what I thought to be there real at all?
I have but slept and now I know it not.
Now I have awakened and things I once knew
like the back of my hand are wholly unfamiliar.
The people and the land I’ve known since childhood
have become as strange to me as if they were all a fantasy.
My childhood playmates have grown grey and old.
The field is bare and bleak, the woods cut down, only the stream still flows as it once did.
Truly, I thought my misfortune great,
some people greet me half-heartedly who once knew me well.
The world is utterly empty of any grace.
This only has 14 lines in all…but it is one I adore since I first read it in high school…
Love Is Not All: It Is Not Meat nor Drink
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.
– Edna St. Vincent Millay –
Some real treasures here, and especially the ones that are new to me. Thanks, all!
Terribly sad.
It reminds me of the opening of Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess, about the death of Blanche of Lancaster. The first part of the poem is an almost textbook description of the symptoms of depression, and tells of the sadness the poet feels at the young woman’s death:
I have gret wonder, be this lyght,
How that I live, for day ne nyght
I may nat slepe wel nigh noght,
I have so many an ydel thoght
Purely for defaute of slepe
That, by my trouthe, I take no kepe
Of nothing, how hit cometh or gooth,
Ne me nis nothing leef nor looth.
Al is ylyche good to me —
Joye or sorwe, wherso hyt be —
For I have felyng in nothyng,
But, as it were, a mased thyng,
Alway in point to falle a-doun;
For sorwful imaginacioun
Is alway hoolly in my minde.
Modernized by She:
I wonder, now that day is here again
How I even live, for day and night
I can hardly sleep at all and it means nothing when I do.
I have so many idle thoughts
Because I can’t sleep
And really, I can’t pay attention
To anything that comes or goes
Nothing seems better or worse than anything else to me
Everything is of equal use to me
Joy. Sorrow. Whatever.
For I have no feeling at all for anything.
It is as if I am stunned,
Always on the point of keeling over
For my sorrows
Have taken over my mind.
Neither is anywhere near 18 lines, but
“The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the marketplace.
Man and boy stood cheering by
As home we brought you shoulder high.”
The only other line I remember from it is “Townsman of a stiller town.”
And:
“With rue my heart is laden
For golden friends I had
For many a rose-lipped maiden
And many a light-foot lad.
By brooks too broad for leaping
The light-foot boys are laid
And rose-lipped maids are sleeping
In fields where roses fade.”
I agree. The last two lines always give me chills.
The wind riz and then it blew
The rain friz and then it snew
Spring has sprung
The grass has riz
I wonder where the flowers is
Spring has sprung
Fall has fell
Winter’s here
And it’s cold as heck
I always thought this was Ogden Nash, but apparently that is not correct and I’m not sure where it came from. I just remember memorizing it as a kid because I thought it was funny.
Back on the subject of Tolkein, I used to be able to do all the riddles from Bilbo and Gollum’s competition.
This thing all things devours
Birds beasts trees flowers
Gnaws iron bites steel
Grinds stones into meal
Slays kings, ruins towns
Beats high mountains down
And here is one memorized from a newspaper (I think it was Dear Abby) a long time ago. Echoes the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner:
Oh shame on the mother of mortals
Who did not stop to teach
The sorrow that lies in dear dumb eyes
The sorrow that has no speech
For the same force shaped the sparrow
That fashioned man and king
And the God of the whole
Gave a spark of soul
To each furred and feathered thing
I just looked it up and it is an abridged version of a longer poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox: The Voice of the Voiceless
It sounds like something Walt Kelly could have written.
I learned it as:
Apparently there are a few variants.
I only knew these lines as a child:
Spring has sprung,
the grass is riz,
I wonder where the flowers is?
We had such long and wearying winters in our high Wyoming valley that even a bit of grass that would finally show as the ice melted away from the sides of the street would bring hope and joy to our lives…I just remember memorizing that little verse as a kid because it was funny. I also thought it was just a little couplet that my father had invented! That is great that I’ve now learned that it is a REAL poem!!
Must have been working in the back of my brain, because this one (which is Ogden Nash) just popped into my head. I don’t know the whole thing any more, but I used to adore it. And cry:
Lord. Speaking of much-loved poems that made me cry as a child, this was the other one:
That one, I made it almost all the way through from memory. But it’s sweeter in print, with the illustrations.
Very cute!