Wriging

When I was a teenager, I took French in a small public school. I took three years (and one summer!) of it. To this day, I know not one word but this is about 50 years later and I still remember the memorized very first phrase. The second day, we had to stand up in class and say (in French) "Good morning. My name is ____".

I only remember high school making memorization necessary. Much I have learned on college was memorized but not by request. I am not a Lit major though.

I remember memorizing "The Raven", and act 4 scene 1 of "Macbeth".
This part I remember by heart with very little thought to this day.

Round about the caldron go;
In the poison'd entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone,
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter'd venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i' the charmed pot!

Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire, burn; and caldron, bubble.

Part in here I don't remember by heart.

then

By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes:--
Open, locks, whoever knocks!

I tend to remember the macabre.

oooo, Cooper, that is very cool. "by the pricking of my thumbs,/Something wicked this way comes"

bwahaha

"Bonjour, my name is fillet of a fenny snake."

I can't remember much from school at all. Who was I? Why did I go?

I do know one (English) poem by heart, but I have no idea why:

Your face, more than others' faces
Maps the half-remembered places
I have come to while I slept.
Continents a dream has kept
Secret from all waking folk,
Until to your face I awoke
And remembered then the shore,
And the dark interior.

I didn't even know who the author is.

Luckily these days that's what the web is for: turns out to be a Donald Justice.

That is a wondeful poem Nils, far far better than the usual things people have to memorize.

I had to memorize Yeats' Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer
Things fall apart
The center cannot hold
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed
And everywhere, the ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst...
are full of passionate intensity.

That's all I can remember right now, but once I started typing the words just came out.

Wow, it has been years and years and years since I wrote or said that stanza.

Whan that Aprill with his shoures sote°
The droghte° of Marche hath perced to the rote,°
And bathed every veyne° in swich licour,°
Of which vertu° engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus° eek with his swete breeth
Inspired° hath in every holt° and heeth°
The tendre croppes,° and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne;
And smale fowles° maken melodye,
That slepen al the night with open yë°—
So priketh hem Nature in hir corages—
Than longen° folk to goon° on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes,° couthe° in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,
The holy blisful martir4 for to seke,°
That hem hath holpen,° whan that they were seke.°

I could only remember the first eight lines just now.

Oh gawsh. I just got out of highschool, please don't make me remember things.. :-o

Dark Motion -- hey congratulations! But you're not old enough to forget things. Your job now is to acquire a lot of information and experiences so that you've actually got some things worth forgetting when you get older.

Justin -- We must have gone to college at the same place! I learned that at the language lab, from some woman who sounded a lot like Ingrid Bergman.

Good for you Lila. I love Yeats, and it's a happy morning when someone quotes him.