General Chat

....any poems you learnt at school?

Although it's YEARS ago since I learnt them, I can still remember--- ''Adlestrop'' ?Robert Thomas ''Ozymandias'' Shelley ''An Irish Airman forsees his Death'' ?Yeats Plus quite a few other verses from WW1 poets. I find they are great things to recite in your head when you want to take your mind off of something nasty (dental treatment!) or even to think of when trying to get off to sleep! Anyone else have some of these well-remembered verses? Allie x

A large chunk of The Lady of Shallott. Always made me think of Spring Onions. I wonder why?

I can remember most of them. My brain cannot forget learned lines, poems and songs. It's full now and I wish I could forget some stuff to make room for newer stuff. Gwynne

Jim - LOL! Luckily we didn't learn any Tennyson! Just remembered another which I have a couple of verses of though ''Blondin'' don't know who by but about a real-life tightrope walker strutting his stuff over Niagra Falls. Allie

Any more?

well I didn't learn any of them obviously went to thickos school

We learnt In Flanders Fields I don't remember any more than the first two lines, but oh well. I know there were other war ones, but I don't remember them.

Daffodils - William Wordsworth

We learnt the Song of Hyawatha Loved it but only remember the first couple of lines. Germaine x

One called 'IF' by Rudyard Kipling (I think).......What is this life if full of care,we have no time to stand and stare....... Dave x

How about ''Dulce et Decorum Est'' (Wilfred Owen) So moving - really affected me as a teenager! Unfortunately I can only remember snatches of it. Dawn - I'm sure you didn't go to 'thicko school' LOL! Unfortunately I actually enjoyed learning things by heart! Allie x

Was watching a prog. tonight about John Betjeman - his poems are brilliant and so accessible.....so many good ones.

If I should die, think only this of me That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed A dust that England bore, shaped, made aware Given once,her flowers to love, her ways to roam A body of England's, breathing english air Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. Rupert Brooke I love that one, still remember it, though not certain I've got it exactly right! (He was sooo much better than Wilfred Owen!) Who had to learn great chunks of Shakespeare? Bev x

Allie must of done as none of the mentioned ones I was taught. Wonder what I actually did at school

We had to learn 'big chunks' of Shakey for O level, but when I took the Eng Lit A level a few years ago, we could take the book into the exam! Seemed like cheating to me! Allie x

Hello, Allie ... :-) Hiawatha a host of golden daffodils I must go down to the sea again to the lonely sea and sky ... cadet roussell has troi gros chien If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or, being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise; If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with triumph and disaster And treat those two imposters just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to broken, And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools; If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breath a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on'; If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch; If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run - Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

and Shakespeare's sonnet ... must find it Love Shakespeare.

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: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd; But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

I do hope you aren't pulling these out of your memory Joy!!! I struggled to remember one verse!!! lol Bev x