POETRY WEDNESDAY: Because people end up memorizing random things. Here are all four of the poems I know by heart. All typed from memory, whence any errors. From A.E. Housman:

I to my perils

Of cheat and charmer

Came clad in armor

By stars divine.

Hope lies to mortals

And most believe her

But man’s deceiver

Was never mine.

From William Blake (all the line breaks are probably wrong):

O rose, thou art sick!

The invisible worm who flies through the night

In the howling storm

Has found out your bed of crimson joy

And his dark secret love

Does your life destroy.

From John Keats:

This living hand, now warm and capable

Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold

And in the icy silence of the tomb

So chill thy days and haunt thy sleeping nights

That thou wouldst wish thine own heart drained of blood

That in my veins red life might flow again

And thou be conscience-calmed–see here it is–

I hold it to you.

And from Lewis Carroll:

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub Bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch.”

He took his vorpal sword in hand,

Long time the manxome foe he sought.

Then rested he by the Tumtum tree

And stood a while in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came.

One-two! one-two! And through and through

His vorpal sword went snickersnack.

He left it dead, and with its head,

He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Calloo, callay!”

He chortled in his joy.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.