fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3468 ]

[ SECRET POST #3468 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3468 ⌋

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Did you ever memorize a poem when you were a kid, whether because you wanted to, or because you had to, for school or something?

What were some of them? Can you still recite them?

(I'm talking about poems that are long enough to be reasonably hard to memorize, not a nursery rhyme.)

Outside of school, I memorized the Tale of Luthien Tinuviel from Lord of the Rings (the poem Aragorn recites in Fellowship) because I was pretty enthralled with it and the -ing pattern.

Inside school, I memorized sooooooooo many. One of the earliest was Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening by Robert Frost, but there were several others.

heehee, "Birches" by Frost.

I stil recall the lines "When I see birches bend to left and right / across the lines of straighter darker trees / I like to think some boy's been swinging them."

I memorized most of Kubla Kahn by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and a few passages from Romeo and Juliet (not quite poetry but it is verse). Both just cause I wanted to.

I can't really recite them in full anymore, but I'm sure if I tried they would come back to me eventually.

If by Rudyard Kipling. Had to learn it for a class. I can't recite it anymore.

I can recite the Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish still. Not a poem but it is something I learned like 10 years ago and is stuck in my head.

the first 60 or so lines of Lepanto by GK Chesterton

Don't remember more than the first 4 lines though

Walking Through the Woods on a Snowy Evening.

Helps that I put it to a melody.

Stopping, not Walking.

Re: Poems you memorized as a kid

(Anonymous) - 2016-07-02 21:00 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Poems you memorized as a kid

(Anonymous) - 2016-07-02 21:07 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Poems you memorized as a kid

(Anonymous) - 2016-07-02 21:15 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Poems you memorized as a kid

(Anonymous) - 2016-07-02 21:26 (UTC) - Expand

Many. I was a budding theater kid (never got past the 'budding' stage) who liked words and liked the sound of my own voice. A lot of Jack Prelutsky, a crapton of Lewis Carroll (I can still do Jabberwocky at the drop of a hat, and most of All In the Golden Afternoon), and a smattering of Shakespeare.

I memorized Jabberwocky in high school and I can still recite it. It never leaves you!

Walking Through Woods on a Snowy Evening, If, parts of Paul Revere's Ride...a bunch actually...

Re: Poems you memorized as a kid

(Anonymous) - 2016-07-02 20:52 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Poems you memorized as a kid

sparrow_lately - 2016-07-02 20:54 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Poems you memorized as a kid

(Anonymous) - 2016-07-03 11:53 (UTC) - Expand

The Walrus and the Carpenter. I fucking loved that poem and loved it more the older I got. I couldn't recite it anymore though, I don't think, except for a few stanzas.

Because we were all around the same age and bored in the same space during the summers, my sisters, our cousins and I used to put on these little show things for the adults where we'd act out poems and things. (This was not an adult-prompted activity, by the by, we just decided to one summer and then kept it going for the next two or three). We memorised chunks of Edward Lear's Nonsense Rhymes, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes, and randomly The General by Siegfried Sassoon, which was possibly a little adult for us but Dad's book of world war poetry was one of the readily-reachable poetry books in the house. I remember that one particularly because I had fun pretending to march around like a soldier while reciting it. Despite, you know, everybody in it besides the General ending up dead.

Everyone in our family could also recite very large sections of The Cremation of Sam McGee by a young age, because that was Dad's idea of a bedtime story. Which, fair enough. It is an awesome poem.

I memorized A Dream Within a Dream by Edgar Allan Poe. I still remember the whole thing.

I hated memorizing poems when I was in elementary school, but I learned the incipit of Iliad and Odyssey by Homer when I was 7/8 I think. Now that I'm an adult I can recite them in greek, too! Bless classical studies... so useless yet so cool...

Dulce Et Decorum Est was drilled into me even before I went to primary school by my grand parents. They wanted me to know about the mistakes of the past and always, always, oppose the glorification of military action. I am so glad they both died before 9/11. The way the military has been put on a pedestal ever since would have horrified them, and rightly so.

Re: Poems you memorized as a kid

skeletal_history - 2016-07-03 01:20 (UTC) - Expand

Lots. Most of them I can still recite. The first english one I learned was the hat song from harry potter 4.
Last one I learned was "Sir Beelzebub" by Edith Sitwell.

I had to memorize "Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou and "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe. I remember doing some kinda weird, uncoordinated dance when I recited them because I'd read that movement helps one remember. Well, I remembered "The Raven", but not "Still I Rise". I still remember all the verses for "The Raven".

I memorized Shakespeare's 145th sonnet for a class in high school. I can still recite it.

define "kid". I don't remember if I did that as a child (probably, but if so I forget) but when I was in high school I did memorize my favorite poem. I still know it mostly by heart. <3

In the 7th grade, when I was watching Moonlighting for the first time, I memorized an exchange done in the style of Dr. Seuss, and yes, I can still recite it, just not as easily.

David: "We're looking for a man with a mole on his nose."
Doorman: "A mole on his nose?"
Maddie: "A mole on his nose."
Doorman: "What kind of clothes?"
Maddie: "What kind of clothes?"
David: "What kind of clothes do you suppose?"
Doorman: "What kind of clothes do I suppose would be worn by a man with a mole on his nose- Who knows?"
David: "Did I happen to mention, did I bother to disclose that this man that we're seeking, we're not sure of his clothes, or anything else, except- he's Chinese, a big clue by itself."
Doorman: "I'm sorry to say, I'm sad to report, I haven't seen anyone at all of that sort. So get away from this door and get out of this place or I'll have to hurt you, put my foot in your face."

Re: Poems you memorized as a kid

ozfroggirl - 2016-07-03 18:06 (UTC) - Expand

For school I've had to memorize The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost (the whole class had to memorize it), and The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe (I chose to memorize it.)

Yep, for my 6th grade English class I memorized the first and last verses of Eugene Field's "Jest 'fore Christmas," which I can still recite.

On my own, I memorized Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy and some William Blake poems when I was around that age, and I still remember them, too.

I love memorizing poetry. It's my go-to anti-anxiety activity when I can't sleep.

I memorized the entirety of a soliloquy from Macbeth for extra credit in high school. It stuck with me for several years afterward. Hell if I know it now, though.

...Does it count if you know an entire book full of nursery rhymes? Because I can probably still fire off about thirty of them from memory.

I memorized "Jabberwocky" after one try when I was seven.

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