/lit/ - Literature

The second coming

I have Kubla Khan memorized.

Prufrock.

>>17567023
i’ve never heard it, who’s it by?

>>17567017
A requirement for what? Nothing is a requirement in general, people even manage to live good lives while being illiterates, although this is becoming rarer and rarer.
Just type "most important English poems" or "top 10 English poems" in your web browser and read the lists of the 3-4 top recommendations, that should give you a list of perhaps 20-30 poems that are very commonly memorized by poetry enthousiasts.

Remember also that Greek rhapsodes used to have to memorize 20-30000 verses in order to do their job. So it's not like there is a clear upper limit to how much you could or should memorize. Just read and remember what you like.

>>17567045
Yeats. It's a very famous, very short, and very striking poem.
>https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming
Poetry foundation is a nice reference website by the way.

>>17567017
Catullus 5; Shakespeare 130; Kubla Khan; Mayakovsky's last poem; Psalms 22, 50 (Vulgate).

>>17567017
The twelve books of Ovid's Metamorphoses

>>17567111
Fuck I'd be out in book one around cervicibus adflat in Daphne.

>>17567111
>>17567115
Scratch that, a few lines on at "if rivers have power", I think. Fuck's sake I was planning on going to bed not reading Ovid.

It's hard to create a list of poems that are objectively necessary to have memorized without shilling for poems I think everyone SHOULD memorize, but here goes:
Ozymandias
The Canterbury Tales Prologue
On First Looking Into Champan's Homer
The Tyger
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
Funeral Blues (Stop All the Clocks)
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening + The Road Less Traveled

>>17567143
>The Canterbury Tales Prologue
Miller's tale is usually the one that sticks

Not really a poem but everyone should know the Lord's Prayer

>>17567017
read more.

>>17567073
some thought leader for retarded tradlarpers probably decreed that all connoisseurs of classic western culture must memorise poems. i've seen this thread a few times and it's always ozymandias for some reason.

Only one I've done so far is this little one by Wordsworth:

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky.
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The child is father if the man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

Probably everyone knows some of Auguries of Innocence whether they know they do or not.

>>17567176
Thanks for reminding me that I know that one. Haven't thought of it in years.

>>17567156
i just want to be one of those cool guys who can recite loads of beautiful poetry whenever prompted

>>17567215
I recommend getting pic related; you can pick a copy up for cheap in most places. I take mine camping and tear pages out as I memorize them.

>whenever prompted
Trust me, this never happens.

>>17567134
kek, goodnight anon thanks for your suggestion

>>17567156
It was Harold Bloom, I believe.

Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost

"Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay."

>>17567224
my grandpa always recited poetry to my around our campfires, that is probably the most likely scenario, but thank you, i will look into it.

>>17567233
i remember memorizing that poem in middle school when reading outsiders, stuck with me ever since.

>>17567235
Good idea, beget children so I have a pliable, captive audience.
While I can recite nearly 2 hours' worth of poetry, there's not a human on this planet who's heard me speak a single line.

>>17567083
That poem is about Crowley being annoying

>>17567244
well, if that’s something you like then good on you, but if not then i’m sure many people would enjoy listening, good luck anon

BRB memorizing ozymandias that's a cool idea

>>17567233
Frost has to be one of the most overrated turds in all of literature.

>>17567233
Certified banger

>>17567284

>>17567300
>>17567296
the duality of man

>>17567307
So I met this dude from Africa and he told me there was a big crumbling statue in the desert idk. Who cares.

>>17567036
If this hasn't gotten you laid there's something you're not doing right.

>>17567255
Awful take.

>>17567017
I am working on the Kalevala. If you are going to memorize a poem you might as well make it count.

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

>That is the land of lost content,
>I see it shining plain,
>The happy highways where I went
>And cannot come again.

>>17567233
I don't get it. What happened to the leaf?

>>17567017
Echo by Alexander Montgomery

The Poem called the Iliad.

I think the only one I've got On Raglan Road memorized. Mostly because of The Dubliners.

>>17568801
o also

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

>>17567017
I only have to poems memorized and I need no more:
Ozymandias and "Yo onions mi propia casa" by Pita Amor"

Pardon me for being rude.
It was not me, it was my food.
It just popped up to say hello,
and now it's gone back down below.

>>17567017
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife
Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art;
I warmed both hands beside the fire of life.
It sinks; and I an ready to depart.

>>17568934
incomprehensibly based

When, long ago, the gods created Earth
In Jove's fair image Man was shaped at birth.
The beasts for lesser parts were next designed;
Yet were they too remote from humankind.
To fill the gap, and join the rest to Man,
Th'Olympian host conceiv'd a clever plan.
A beast they wrought, in semi-human figure,
Filled it with vice, and called the thing a Nigger.

>>17567151
My favorite's are the merchant's and the miller's for their lighthearted goofiness. The friar's has a good message as well.

>>17569025
pretty cool chest tat

>>17567017
>poetry

I have Earendil the Mariner memorized, Song of Beren and Luthien as well, plus Galadriel's lament of Eldamar

>>17568801
You might know Sally Gardens then too.

I've memorised and successfully forgotten hundreds of poems (do that when I'm bored at work sometimes), but somehow I can still perfectly recall A Thing of Beauty... by Keats despite memorizing it like 10 years ago. It's the only poem (well, opening to a long ass poem) that lives rent free in my long term memory

>>17567017

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

>>17567224
>tear the pages out?

Maybe I'm retarded but actually tear them out? I'm really confused and wondering why.
Unless you just mean breaking it out around a camp fire like every hippie with an acoustic does.

>>17567073
>A requirement for what? Nothing is a requirement in general
stopped reading after such a boring start of the post

>>17567083
>Poetry foundation is a nice reference website by the way.
>doesnt say the publishing year of the poem

>>17567017
-The first book of Paradise Lost
-The first book of The Prelude
-The Wasteland

>>17571102
>The Prelude
based!

>>17571022
It's partly because I'm an ultralight hiker and don't need the weight, partly symbolic of having transferred the poem into my head, and partly so I can leave the pages scattered interesting places. I finished Auguries of Innocence while riding in a pickup bed driving through rural Morocco, and scattered the pages as we passed through villages. I like to think people pick them up and keep them.

>>17571102
>memorize The Wasteland
Don't ever text me again.

From Atalanta In Calydon:
Before The Beginning Of Years

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Before the beginning of years
There came to the making of man
Time, with a gift of tears;
Grief, with a glass that ran;
Pleasure, with pain for leaven;
Summer, with flowers that fell;
Remembrance, fallen from heaven,
And madness risen from hell;
Strength without hands to smite;
Love that endures for a breath;
Night, the shadow of light,
And life, the shadow of death.

And the high gods took in hand
Fire, and the falling of tears,
And a measure of sliding sand
From under the feet of the years;
And froth and the drift of the sea;
And dust of the laboring earth;
And bodies of things to be
In the houses of death and of birth;
And wrought with weeping and laughter,
And fashioned with loathing and love,
With life before and after
And death beneath and above,
For a day and a night and a morrow,
That his strength might endure for a span
With travail and heavy sorrow,
The holy spirit of man.

From the winds of the north and the south,
They gathered as unto strife;
They breathed upon his mouth,
They filled his body with life;
Eyesight and speech they wrought
For the veils of the soul therein,
A time for labor and thought,
A time to serve and to sin;
They gave him light in his ways,
And love, and space for delight,
And beauty, and length of days,
And night, and sleep in the night.
His speech is a burning fire;
With his lips he travaileth;
In his heart is a blind desire,
In his eyes foreknowledge of death;
He weaves, and is clothed with derision;
Sows, and he shall not reap;
His life is a watch or a vision
Between a sleep and a sleep.

>>17567017
"Wandrers Nachtlied" obviously.
If you're into romanticism I very much recommend memorising "Wenn nicht mehr Zahlen und Figuren", other personal favourites include... anything by Eichendorff, really. "Frische Fahrt" I personally recommend.

>>17571840
>Frische Fahrt

O captain my captain

Bright star

>>17572078
kek

>>17571215
That's an interesting fucking take ngl
nice

I know these by heart:
>The Cornelian by Lord Byron
>A Fragment by Lord Byron
>'When we two parted' by Lord Byron
>The Destruction of Sennacherib by Lord Byron
>'she walks in beauty' by Lord Byron
>'I wandered lonely as a cloud' by Wordsworth
>Fragmentary chunks of 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner' by Coleridge

a leaf
left
by the
cat
I guess

There once was a man from Rangoon
Whose farts could be heard on the moon.
When least you’d expect ‘em
They’d burst from his rectum
With the force of a raging typhoon.

>>17571219
What's wrong with The Wasteland?

>>17567017
None because I'm not a pseud. Who else would be claiming it's fucking REQUIRED to memorize any poem? I'd understand talking about moral obligations and so on, but memorizing poems? Really? You bunch of fucking retards.

>>17575298
it's a required part of some education systems. it's only this last generation which had exam standards reduced to the point they don't know what by gobbet means

>>17567023
good poem

>>17567017
Depends on your nationality. For instance, All russians should memorize a good chunk of pushkin. All Arabs should memorize Al-Mutanbi and Qays. All Englishmen should memorize Shakespear. All chinese should memorize Lu Xu. All americans should just kill themselves.

>>17571033
Decapitate anon's soul, with an axe to the frog's head. Lash out!

>>17567017
I recommend memorizing based on what you believe will undress itself for you over time. Of course, important passages of Scripture gain meaning as one ages, but I'd also recommend sections 6 and 7 of Song of Myself. I fondly remember a day in my early twenties when I sat by a beautiful lake and a sudden remembrance of the last lines of Prufrock with a sudden, instinctive clarity to their richness and meaning came upon me. It convinced me of the value of memorization as something spiritual and beyond just rote scholasticism.

I've memorised the works of Rupi Kaur.
No one is impressed. They think I'm just having a one sided conversation.

The Coleridge Fragments are good and easy:

Come, come, thou bleak December wind,
And blow the dead leaves from the tree.
Flash, like a love-thought, thro' me, Death,
And take a life that wearies me.

Life is mostly froth and bubble; Two things stand like stone, Kindness in another's trouble, Courage in your own.
- Adam Lindsay Gordon

I memorised this and use it almost like my own prayer of sorts. I think it when life is hard and I think it when I help others.

>>17571033
Thank you for your very interesting post.

>>17571041
Who cares? You can search it on the web easily. The point is the foundation has a huge collection of poems you can read and then research further if you like, and it's easy to navigate.

>>17567235
Based grandpa. Reminds me of François Bayrou, a French politician who grew up with a stutter and who overcame it by memorizing and reciting in public thousands of verses. His own father was a huge poetry enthusiast.

My step father recites Australian bush poetry.
He learns a new one every week for his meetings with the freemasons. They enjoy his renditions. Quite fun to listen to him really.
More people should learn and recite.

>>17567017
gonna have to go with
>Stopping By Woods
>An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
>the destruction of sennacherib

>We are the music makers,
>And we are the dreamers of dreams,
>Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
>And sitting by desolate streams; —
World-losers and world-forsakers,
>On whom the pale moon gleams: Yet we are the movers and shakers
> Of the world for ever, it seems.

https://voca.ro/17OQyMsFxWrt

I mostly memorise nonsense poetry.
>The jumblies - Lear
>Jabberwocky - Carroll
>The dong with the luminous nose -Lear
And a few others
>Tarantella - Belloc
>Ozymandias - Shelley
>Death's echo - Auden

Lady Lazarus
Ozymandias
Anything by Catullus

Half a league, half a league,
half a league onward,
all in the valley of death
rode the six-hundred.
Forward the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns! he said.
Into the valley of death
rode the six-hundred

>>17578425
honour the charge they made!

Horatius by Thomas Babington Macaulay

Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the Gate:
"To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods.