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Reddit, what are the best poems to have memorized?
- "Thirty Days Hath September,
April, June and November.
All the Rest Have Thirty-One,
Except February."
EDIT: Holy shit people are emotionally invested in whatever version of this rhyme they learned as a kid. Please let my inbox rest in peace. :(
— coupland
- Count your blessings
Instead of your crosses
Count your gains
Instead of your losses
Count your joys
Instead of your woes
Count your friends
Instead of your foes.
— Back2Bach
- Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost
>Nature’s first green is gold,
>Her hardest hue to hold.
>Her early leaf’s a flower;
>But only so an hour.
>Then leaf subsides to leaf.
>So Eden sank to grief,
>So dawn goes down to day.
>Nothing gold can stay.
— JimmySinner
- I'd start with the Odyssey. Keep the oral tradition going.
— atoz88
- In Flanders Fields by John McCrae.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
— user4474
- Shakespeare's Sonnet 18.
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 to short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd,
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall death brag thou wandr'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
— Clash-Titan
- Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley
— Barack-YoMama
- Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
— BrownDerp
- *The road not taken* by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
— Orientalis_lacus
- My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun
Coral is far more red than her lips red
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun?
If hairs be wired, black wired grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
but no such roses see I in her cheeks
and in some perfume is there more delight
than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
that music hath a far more pleasing sound
I grant I never saw a goddess go
my mistress when she walks treads on the ground
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
as any she belied with false compare
— me-neither
- "If" by Rudyard Kipling.
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 impostors 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 worn-out 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 breathe 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!
— maantjesaysbah
- my name is cow
and when it's night
or when the moon
is shining bright
and all the men
have gone to bed
i stay up late
i lick the bread
- u/poem_for_your_sprog
i know i didnt get the spelling right but i think i remember all the words
— puos_otatop
- I see the moon
And the moon sees me
And nobody sees
As secretly
Unless there’s a kid
In Kalamazoo,
Or Mexico,
Or Timbuktu,
Who looks in the sky
At the end of the day,
And she thinks of me
In a friendly way —
‘Cause we both lie still
And we watch the moon;
And we haven’t met yet,
But we might do, soon.
From Garbage Delight
— snotnboss