Passages Or Poems You've Memorized

[eflo]

It was a school project when I was younger to remember a speech from Shakespeare as well as from Milton's Paradise Lost. On my own, I also decided to remember Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky". I'm curious to know what passages from literature and/or poetry you've memorized.

Now, I'm going to go hunting for the 'Favourite Quotes' thread...

[eflo]

Have a good weekend everyone. I hope to visit here tomorrow...and catch up with everything that's going on.

I can't seem to find the 'Favourite Quotes' thread. I'd appreciate it if anyone could point me in the right direction. Maybe I'm just so exhausted...

[Moonlight]

Most of the stuff I've memorized is short.

"Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree
I sold you and you sold me
There they lie and here lie we
Under the Spreading chestnut Tree."-1984

"The wait of this sad time we must obey
Speak what we feel not what we ought to say
The oldest hath borne most, We that are young
Shall never see so much nor live so long."-closing lines from King Lear

And, I've memorized Hamlet's speech to the actors ("Speak the speech I pray you...") and several monologues and scenes from plays.

[mazarane]

Hi eflo, good to see you again-
favourite quotes thread :D (http://www.literatureforums.net/viewtopic.php?t=249)

I don't think I had to memorize any passages of literature in school. There are bits of Faust I can half-remember, but I'm struggling now, so I would hardly be able to glibly quote them....

[jibbly]

"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go."

T.S. Elliot

i love that quote! saw it in junior high and never forgot it, kind of a mantra for me at times.

"Om Mani Peme Hung"
Tibetan/Buddhist prayer

when i learned about it...i liked it.

[follow_me_around]

"WHAT'S THE CATCH?"

From Catch 22

Cheers

[eflo]

Work has been very slow this past week, so on Friday, instead of reading more of the book I had been reading that week, I decided to try to remember the "All the world's a stage" speech from Shakespeare's "As You Like It". I've got about half of it memorized so far...

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players,
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Now a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel
...

[*Shakermaker*]

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

Oscar Wilde, who else.

[sabrina]

oh man... well... i have a few of them memorized... i actually did memorize some parts of jabberwocky.... :D ...
twas brillig and the silthy toves
did gyre and gimble in the wabe
all mimsy were the borogroves
and the mome raths outgrabe

beware the jabberwock my son!
the jaws that bite, the claws that catch
beware the jubjub bird
and shun the frumious bandersnatch!

...and that's about it... i think there is something in the middle of those two stanzas... well, i don't really care cause i never really did read it to memorize it... i just remember it...

then there's... a shakesperean sonnet... 16 i believe it is?
(this may sound way familiar...)
"shall i compare thee to a summer's day?
thou art more lovely and more temperate,
rough winds do shake the darling buds of may,
and summer's lease hath all too short a date...."
then comes the rest which i'm too lazy to keep writing...

and then i memorized Robert Frost's "the road not taken"..
"two roads diverged in a yellow wood
and i was sorry i could not travel both and be one traveler
long i stood, and looked one as far as i could
to where it bent, in the undergrowth...."
blah blah, there comes the rest...

i also memorized a famous poem from a spanish writer called Pablo Neruda... He's real famous... and i simply love this one... it's in his book "20 poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada" (20 love poems and a desperate song)
"Puedo escribir los versos mas tristes esta noche.
Escribir, por ejemplo, la noche esta estrellada, y tiritan azules,
los astros, a lo lejos.
El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.
Puedo escribir los versos mas tristes esta noche,
yo la quise, y, a veces, ella tambien me quiso..."
i won't translate it cause i really don't want to butcher it... but it is such a beautiful poem...

then i know a few by emily dickinson...
"success is counted sweetest
by those who never succeed,
to understand a nectar,
requires sorest need."
and a few others..

wow.... reviewing all of these things i can see why people call me obsessive... lol.... :D

[Pitseleh]

'Was it for not I bled for thee
defying omnipotent powers;
the blood was mine, the battle thine
to smother in bright blooming flowers'

I read this about 10 years ago, I have no idea what book it was in, actually if anyone knows....?

[eflo]

'Was it for not I bled for thee
defying omnipotent powers;
the blood was mine, the battle thine
to smother in bright blooming flowers'

I read this about 10 years ago, I have no idea what book it was in, actually if anyone knows....?

I did a search and came up with this site (http://www.mojoworld.net/sil/fandom/dbs/dbsa_teckla_digest.html). The quote occurs towards the bottom of the page...page 458. I don't recognize the work...or the author...hmmm. Very interesting passage though.

[ArthurDent]

"This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy..."

Hitch hiker's guide to the galaxy - a summary of the human nature in a nut shell... :D

[Star_Anise]

"On Raglan Road on an autumn day I met her first and knew
That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue.
I saw the danger yet I walked along the enchanted way
And I said, let grief be a falling leaf at the dawning of the day.

On Grafton street in November we tripped lightly along the ledge
Of the deep ravine where can be seen the worth of passions' pledge
The Queen of Hearts still making tarts and I not making hay;
Oh, I loved too much and by such, by such, is happiness thrown away.

I gave her gifts of the mind, I gave her the secret sign that's known
To the artists who have known the true gods of sound and stone
And word and tint. I did not stint for I gave her poems to say
With her name there and her own dark hair like clouds over fields of May.

On a quiet street where old ghosts meet I see her walking now
Away from me, so hurriedly my reason must allow,
That I had wooed not as I should, a creature made of clay -
When the angel woos the clay he'd lose his wings at the dawning of the
day."

On Raglan Road, by Patrick Kavanaugh. I loved it so much I learnt it by heart. Not word perfect, I'm sure, but I'm surprised that I still remember it all.

I still remember lots of Sylvia Plath, especially Daddy and Lady Lazarus. I have a habit of quoting Cut whenever I cut myself and scaring people.

"What a thrill
My thumb instead of an onion
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of hinge."

Various pieces of Robert Frost, Ogden Nash and lots of other poets have stuck in my head, as well as hefty chunks of Shakespeare, mostly from roles I've acted. Some of the foremost include the final scene of Othello, Hamlet, Twelfth Night and Macbeth. There are also random bits of the Hitchhiker's.

It's kind of strange to think of all the literary oddments that are still rattling around in my head. Once you add song lyrics, movie quotes and TV lines, you might get an idea of how truly "post modern" I can be.

[Pitseleh]

It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. " ...
Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera,

[NBax]

It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. " ...
Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera


Love this book - especially the lovelorn protagonist getting drunk on his Mum's perfume and being found down the docks lying next to a pool of his fragrant vomit. And his habit of eating rose petals whilst reading the letters of his beloved. And his writing love poems onto rose petals with a pin. Garcia Marquez is a great writer - I just wish I could speak Spanish so I could read his new book before the translation comes out...

[LadyAphelion]

The last lines of most of my favorite books, Robert Frost's poems Walking in the Woods on a Snowy Evening and The Road Not Taken, Robert Louis Stevenson's poemNow Bare to the Beholder's Eye (read (http://www.emule.com/poetry/?page=poem&poem=1894)). numerous momentous speeches and near all I've written. Of course ;).

[superlovezapper]

hmmm, good question. I've memorized Hecate's speech in Macbeth for a performance: And which is worse all you hath done hath been but for a wayward son spiteful and wrathful who as others do loves for his own ends but not for you!

It was a while ago! Can ya tell? :D

[Sjoerd]

There's a sigh for yes and a sigh for no
and a sigh for I can't bear it
O what can be done, shall we stay or run?
O cut the sweet apple and share it.

The last lines of Sharing Eve's Apple from John Keats. I'm not really into poetry but I like that one, it's kind of an ode to sin, nice :wink:

[one_raven]

I didn't memorize this for school, I just adore the poem and heard Ginsberg read it so many times, it just kind of stuck.
It's been a while now, honestly, so I will likely mess up a few lines and there is one line that he wrote, but he does not recite in the reading I have, so I always skip it....

America
America, I have given you all and now I am nothing.
American two-dollars and twenty-seven cents
January seventeenth, nineteen fifty six
I can't stand my own mind.
When will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
I don't feel good, don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America, when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America, why are your libraries full of tears?
America, when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America, after all, it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers
I don't think he'll come back - it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America, stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America, the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months.
Every day somebody goes on trial for murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid.
I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up
There's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America, I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia.
I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility.
Businessmen are serious.
Movie producers are serious.
Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana, millions of genitals, and unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 m.p.h.
...and twenty-five thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.
America, how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue, like Henry Ford, my strophes are as individual as his automobiles - moreso they're all different sexes.
America, I will sell you strophes 2500 a piece - 500 down on your old strophe.
America, free Tom Mooney.
America, save the Spanish Loyalists.
America, Sacco & Vanzetti must not die.
I am the Scottsboro boys.
America, when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1935 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain.
Everybody must have been a spy.
America, you don't really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians... them Russians and them Chinamen.
And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive.
The Russia's power mad.
She wants to take our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago.
Her needs a Red Readeres Digestes.
Her wants our auto plants in Siberia.
Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read.
Him need big black niggers. Aah.
Her make us all work sixteen hours a day.
Help.
America, this is quite serious.
America, this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America, is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

I cheated a little and looked up a line or two :). Like I said, it's been a while.
I used to listen to this at least once a day.
I need to start doing that again.
It is the most sublime poem I have ever known.

[Queue]

I remembered this poem because someone in my school did an excellent interpretation of it in English class.

Out, Out
The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside them in her apron
To tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap
He must have given the hand.
However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man's work, though a child at heart
He saw all spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off
The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then-the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little-less-nothing! and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

[Star_Anise]

I remembered this poem because someone in my school did an excellent interpretation of it in English class.

I memorised this one last semester myself for my poetry class - it's fantastic. We only had to learn twelve lines of our chosen piece, but I, being the show off that I am, had to learn the whole thing. You can't cut up a beautiful piece like that and expect to be able to understand it properly. Not sure how much I could recite from memory now...

[Nafe]

I have outlasted all desire
My dreams and I have grown apart
My grief alone is left entire
The gleanings of an empty heart
The storms of ruthless dispensation
Have struck my flowery garland numb
I live in lonely desolation
And wonder when my end will come.

It's by Pushkin. I forget any other information, but I remember the poem. Memorized it as a very weird and vaguely depressed seventh grader.

How about some Blake:

A little black thing among the snow
Crying Weep, Weep in notes of woe
Where are thy father and mother? Say?
They have both gone up to the church to pray.

Beacuse I was happy upon the heath.
And smil'd among the winter's snow.
They cloth'd me in the clothes of death
And taught me to sing the notes of woe.

And beacuse I am happy. & dance. & sing.
They think they have done me no injury
And are gone to praise God and his priest and kind
Who make up a heaven of our misery.

I like that one a lot, and it's always going around in my head.

[TariNumenesse]

Most things I have memorised have been for school or as a result of school. In French, grade seven, I memorised Jacques Prevert's poem Page d'ecriture, and now, in year 12 French, I can still recite it. I memorised Judith Wright's Eli, Eli in grade eight, and William Blake's The Fly in grade nine. I can remember The Fly much better than Eli, Eli.

But most recently I have almost memorised Edmund's first solioquy from King Lear, as a result of it being at the start of a scene on the DVD.

[Mads]

This comes to mind right now. It's from a song but I think it can rightfully be called
poetry as well. It's the last verse of a Townes Van Zandt song called Kathleen.
Since we're taking this from memory, it is poissible that it's not 100% correct.

The stars hang high above
The oceans roar
The moon has come to lead me
To her door
There's crystal across the sand
And the waves, they take my hand
Soon I'm gonna see my sweet Kathleen