Who will go drive with Fergus now,
And pierce the deep wood’s woven shade
And dance upon the level shore?
Young man, lift up your russet brow,
And lift your tender eyelids, maid,
And brood on hopes and fears no more.
And no more turn aside and brood
Upon love’s bitter mystery;
For Fergus rules the brazen cars,
And rules the shadows of the wood,
And the white breast of the dim sea
And all dishevelled, wandering stars.
Earlier I lamented about having no poems memorized, then recalled a few days later I had this one memorized about 20 years ago and am pleased it’s still rattling around in there. And “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll will NEVER be shaken. A head injury may knock “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold or “God’s Grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins loose.
“Leda and the Swan” by Yeats was part of a high school English class. Other than that, I didn’t encounter Yeats until studying, then re-reading, and re-re-reading, then re-studying and re-re-re-reading Ulysses by James Joyce. The younger lead character, Stephen Dedalus, has memories of singing the poem to his dying mother and fragments work their way into his day.
Poetry fragments sometimes pop in while out and about. Often context-free – more an echo of a word or phrase or the rhythm of something nearby. “And no more turn aside and brood” is the one that most often gives its (to my conscious mind) advice flicking its tongue into the corners of the day.
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Playing with poetry – couldn't resist, sorry: Mine old first, memorized poem was A Refusal to Mourn the Death by Fire, of a Child in London (Dylan Thomas), but the Lake Isle of Innisfree is up there and some Robert Herrick. I do not have Jabberwocky memorized, unlike every other family member, which shames me completely. Came across this a few weeks ago – someone left a book of Renaissance Verse for the taking on the sidewalk. This is just part of Thomas Carew's poem for John Donne:
An Elegy upon the Death of the Dean of Paul's, Dr. John Donne
Can we not force from widowed Poetry,
Now thou art dead (Great Donne) one Elegy
To crown thy hearse?…
Have we no voice, no tune? Dids't thou dispense
Through all our language, both the words and sense?
'Tis a sad truth; the Pulpit may her plain
And sober Christian precepts still retain,
Doctrines it may, and wholesome uses frame,
Grave homilies and lectures, But the flame
Of thy brave soul, that shot such heat and light,
As burnt our earth and made our darkness bright…
..
The muses garden with pedantic weeds
Oer'spread was purged by thee; the lazy seeds
Of servile imitation thrown away;
and fresh invention planted….
…
Though every pen should share a distinct part,
Yet art thou Theme enough to tire all art;
Let others carve the rest, it shall suffice
I. on thy tomb this epitaph incise:
Here lies a king that ruled as he thought fit
The universal monarchy of wit
Here lie to flamens*, and both those, the best
Apollo's first, at last the true God's priest.
–Thomas Carew