National Poetry Month
Apr. 30th, 2007 09:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hobgoblinnLooks like I'm about to miss National Poetry Month. What should I share?
How my 10th and 12th grade English teacher, Willie Mae Burlage, (God rest her soul) told us that we should all memorize poems because someday we might be captured or imprisoned and pretty much stuck with whatever we'd furnished our little minds with?
How I found out some years later, how right she was? How the fragments I could pull forth both tortured and strengthened me at a very bad time in my life?
Nah. Here's something I can recite from memory (might miss a bit here and there, so you'll know I'm not cheating):
Now the hungry lion roars, and the wolf behowls the moon,
Whilst the heavy plowman snores, all with weary task fordone.
Now the wasted brands do glow, whilst the screech owl, screeching loud,
Puts the wretch that lies in woe, in remembrance of a shroud.
Now it is the time of night when the graves all gaping wide,
Every one lets forth his sprite in the churchway paths to glide
And we fairies that do run by the triple Hecate's team,
from the presence of the sun following darkness like a dream,
Now are frolic. Not a mouse shall disturb this hallowed house.
I am sent with broom before, to sweep the dust behind the door.
[And a little later, the hobgoblin makes his last appearance:]
If we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended.
That you have but slumbered here, whilst these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme, no more yielding but a dream
Gentles, do not reprehend. If you pardon, we will mend.
And as I am an honest Puck, if we have unearned luck,
now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,we shall make amends 'ere long.
Else the Puck a liar call. And so, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands if we be friends,
and Robin shall restore amends.
(Will Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's Dream, V,I).
How my 10th and 12th grade English teacher, Willie Mae Burlage, (God rest her soul) told us that we should all memorize poems because someday we might be captured or imprisoned and pretty much stuck with whatever we'd furnished our little minds with?
How I found out some years later, how right she was? How the fragments I could pull forth both tortured and strengthened me at a very bad time in my life?
Nah. Here's something I can recite from memory (might miss a bit here and there, so you'll know I'm not cheating):
Now the hungry lion roars, and the wolf behowls the moon,
Whilst the heavy plowman snores, all with weary task fordone.
Now the wasted brands do glow, whilst the screech owl, screeching loud,
Puts the wretch that lies in woe, in remembrance of a shroud.
Now it is the time of night when the graves all gaping wide,
Every one lets forth his sprite in the churchway paths to glide
And we fairies that do run by the triple Hecate's team,
from the presence of the sun following darkness like a dream,
Now are frolic. Not a mouse shall disturb this hallowed house.
I am sent with broom before, to sweep the dust behind the door.
[And a little later, the hobgoblin makes his last appearance:]
If we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended.
That you have but slumbered here, whilst these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme, no more yielding but a dream
Gentles, do not reprehend. If you pardon, we will mend.
And as I am an honest Puck, if we have unearned luck,
now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,we shall make amends 'ere long.
Else the Puck a liar call. And so, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands if we be friends,
and Robin shall restore amends.
(Will Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's Dream, V,I).
