Are there any poetry memorizers here? I thought we could compile a list of poems that people could use to for memorization ideas. Add your favorites in the comments.
The book, 101 Poems to Remember, edited by Ted Hughes, has a list that might make a good starting point:
- A. E. Housman: ‘On Wenlock Edge’
- Alexander Pope: From An Epistle To Dr Arbuthnot
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson: The Eagle
- Andrew Young: Field Glasses
- Anonymous: Donal Og
- Anonymous: Mad Tom’s Song
- D. H. Lawrence: Piano
- Dylan Thomas: A Refusal To Mourn The Death, By Fire, Of A Child In London
- Dylan Thomas: Poem In October
- Edward Thomas: The Combe
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning: A Musical Instrument
- Emily Dickinson: ‘A Wind That Rose’
- Emily Dickinson: ‘Like Rain It Sounded’
- Emily Dickinson: ‘There Came A Wind’
- Emily Dickinson: ‘There’s A Certain Slant Of Light’
- Emily Dickinson: ‘This World Is Not Conclusion’
- Ezra Pound: The Return
- F. R. Higgins: Song For The Clatter-Bones
- Gerard Manley Hopkins: Binsey Poplars
- Gerard Manley Hopkins: Inversnaid
- Gerard Manley Hopkins: Spring And Fall
- Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Windhover
- John Betjeman: A Subaltern’s Love-Song
- John Betjeman: Meditation On The A30
- John Crowe Ransom: Bells For John Whiteside’s Daughter
- John Crowe Ransom: Blue Girls
- John Crowe Ransom: Winter Remembered
- John Donne: Song
- John Donne: The Relique
- John Keats: La Belle Dame Sans Merci
- John Keats: On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer
- John Keats: To Autumn
- John Milton: On The Late Massacre In Piedmont
- Keith Douglas: How To Kill
- Lewis Carroll: Jabberwocky
- Percy Bysshe Shelley: Ozymandias
- Philip Larkin: Livings (Part 2)
- Robert Frost: Neither Out Far Nor In Deep
- Robert Frost: Provide, Provide
- Robert Frost: Spring Pools
- Robert Frost: Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
- Robert Frost: The Road Not Taken
- Robert Frost: The Runaway
- R. S. Thomas: Here
- Rudyard Kipling: James I
- Rudyard Kipling: The Way Through The Woods
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Kubla Khan
- Seamus Heaney: The Skunk
- Stevie Smith: Not Waving But Drowning
- Sylvia Plath: Crossing The Water
- Thomas Hardy: Beeny Cliff
- Thomas Hardy: The Darkling Thrush
- Thomas Wyatt: ‘They Flee From Me’
- T. S. Eliot: Death By Water
- T. S. Eliot: La Figla Che Piange
- T. S. Eliot: Lines For An Old Man
- T. S. Eliot: Marina
- T. S. Eliot: Mr Apollinax
- T. S. Eliot: The Journey Of The Magi
- Walter De La Mare: An Epitaph
- W. B. Yeats: ‘A Woman’s Beauty’
- W. B. Yeats: ‘Come Let Us Mock At The Great’
- W. B. Yeats: Death
- W. B. Yeats: Easter 1916
- W. B. Yeats: He Hears The Cry Of The Sedge
- W. B. Yeats: Leda And The Swan
- W. B. Yeats: Roger Casement
- W. B. Yeats: The Second Coming
- W. E. Henley: Invictus
- W. H. Auden: ‘Carry Her Over The Water’
- W H. Auden: Musee Des Beaux Arts
- W. H. Auden: ‘Stop All The Clocks’
- W. H. Auden: The Fall Of Rome
- W. H. Auden: This Lunar Beauty
- Wilfred Owen: Anthem For Doomed Youth
- Wilfred Owen: Dulce Et Decorum Est
- Wilfred Owen: Strange Meeting
- William Blake: Auguries Of Innocence
- William Blake: Long John Brown And Little Mary Bell
- William Blake: The Sick Rose
- William Blake: The Smile
- William Blake: The Tyger
- William Empson: The Small Bird To The Big
- William Shakespeare: ‘Fear No More The Heat O’ The Sun’
- William Shakespeare: ‘Let Me Not To The Marriage Of True Minds’
- William Shakespeare: ‘My Love Is As A Fever’
- William Shakespeare: My Mistress’ Eyes
- William Shakespeare: ‘Not Mine Own Fears, Nor The Prophetic Soul’
- William Shakespeare: ‘Other Slow Arts’
- William Shakespeare: ‘Our Revels Now Are Ended’
- William Shakespeare: ‘That Time Of Year Thou Mayst In Me Behold’
- William Shakespeare: ‘The Heavens Themselves, The Planets’
- William Shakespeare: ‘The Witches’ Song’ from Macbeth
- William Shakespeare: ‘Tir’d With All These, For Restful Death I Cry’
- William Shakespeare: ‘To Be, Or Not To Be’ from Hamlet
- William Shakespeare: ‘To-Morrow, And To-Morrow, And To-Morrow’
- William Wordsworth: ‘A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal’
- William Wordsworth: The Simplon Pass
- William Wordsworth: The Solitary Reaper
- William Wordsworth: Tintern Abbey
- William Wordsworth: Upon Westminster Bridge
A few more that might be interesting:
- T. S. Eliot: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
- William Shakespeare: The Phoenix and the Turtle
- Edmund Spenser: Sonnets
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson: The Lady of Shallot
- John Keats: Ode to a Nightingale
There is also a blog post with additional ideas:
Add your ideas in the comments below.