"Quick, quick, the cat's been sick!
Where, where?
Under the chair!
Hasten, hasten, fetch the basin!
Alas, alas, it is too late! T
he carpet's in an awful state!
No, no, it's all in vain....
...for she has licked it up again."
The only one I can remember off the top of my head.
The time has come, the walrus said, to speak of other things, of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of Cabbages and kings, of why the sea is boiling hot and wither pigs have wings.
One side effect of unskippable cutscenes in God of War 3 is that I learned Hermes' poem while he's taunting Kratos.
Never, never, learn,
Never, never, change,
Kratos, the fool who killed his own blood,
Kratos, the fool among mortals and gods,
Forever, ever, cursed,
Forever, ever, doomed,
Consumed by vengeance til his last breath,
The Spartan lights the way to dusty death.
And this one by Ogden Nash:
"The camel has a single hump,
The dromedary two.
Or else the other way around,
I'm never sure, are you?"
Do songs count? They're... technically just poems. If so then yes. A lot!
Edit(not a song):
The tears to fall
They come to all
We want to run
But cannot hope
The way is gone
Only known to the blind
We open our eyes
But close our minds
We see the empty bottle
Ignore the finds
We all want to see the bottom
Take the jump
Leave the rope
We only want to hope
But how sad it is to never know
We may find the answer
When we close our eyes
Then we go and open minds
And then the blind become the kings
How can you teach
When the faded lines
Are all the finds
And all the left are minds from blinds
The Cycle is left to all of us
But we cannot trust the rest
Until we leave the nest
We plunge to fate we cannot know
But then I suppose
Nothing is darker than eyes that are closed.
I will never bother you
I will never promise to
I will never follow you
I will never bother you
Never speak a word again
I will crawl away for good
I will move away from here
You won't be afraid of fear
No thought was put into this
I always knew it would come to this
Things have never been so swell
I have never failed to feel
pain
You know you're right
I'm so warm and calm inside
I no longer have to hide
Lets talk about someone else
Steaming soup begins to melt
Nothing really bothers her
She just wants to love himself
I will move away from here
You won't be afraid of fear
No thought was put into this
I always knew it'd come to this
Things have never been so swell
I have never failed to feel
I know a few bits and pieces from some of the big epics (Iliad, Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, Beowulf, etc). As far as full poems, no I don't. We studied poetry in school, but our class focused more on understanding the meaning/message as opposed to memorization.
Qieuro hacer contigo,
Lo que la primavera,
hace con los cerezos
s' a love poem that means
"I want to do to you what spring does with the cherry trees"
don't know the title, but it's a poem by this Chilean dude named Neruda I think.
I only know it because It was in a copy of Count Zero by Gibson and it was something he wrote to his wife in one of the pre-story pages.
My favourite stuff is Wilfred Owen, Larkin and Shakespeare. I don't really remember any entire poems though, only chunks.
Not keen on Donne. It strikes me that he's just being an intellectual masturbator and not really saying anything particularly deep or interesting at all.
Pull up a chair and sit on the floor
And I will tell you a lie, or truth; I'm unsure
Two dead boys got up to fight
They pulled their swords and shot each other
The deaf policemen heard the noise
If you don't believe my lie is untrue
Ask the blind man
He saw it to
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun
Coral is far more red than her lips red
If snow is white, why then her breasts are dun
If hair is wires, black wires grow on her head
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white
But no such roses see I in her cheeks
And in some perfumes 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 by false compare
-Sonnet 130
And "My Love is Like a Red Red Rose", large parts of Poe's "The Raven", Hamlet's "To Be Or Not To Be" and Richard III's "Now is the Winter...", but I won't bore you. Some I learned in school, others for the stage, others by osmosis, others just for fun.
I'll admit I cheated a bit towards the end, but I remember most of it.
Macavity's a mystery cat; he's called the Hidden Paw,
For he's the master criminal who can defy the law.
He's the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad's despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime, Macavity's not there!
Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime; Macavity's not there!
You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air,
But I tell you once and once again, Macavity's not there!
Macavity's a ginger cat, he's very tall and thin;
You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in.
His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed;
His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed.
He sways his head from side to side, with movements like a snake;
And when you think he's half asleep, he's always wide awake.
Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
For he's a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.
You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square,
But when a crime's discovered, then Macavity's not there!
He's outwardly respectable, they say he cheats at cards,
And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard's.
And when the larder's looted, or the jewel-case is rifled,
Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke's been stifled,
Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair,
Aye, there's the wonder of the thing! Macavity's not there!
And when the Foreign Office finds a treaty's gone astray,
Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way,
There may be a scap of paper in the hall or on the stair,
But it's useless of investigate; Macavity's not there!
And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say:
"It must have been Macavity!", but he's a mile away.
You'll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs,
Or engaged in doing complicated long division sums.
Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macacity,
There never was a cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
He always has an alibi, or one or two to spare:
And whatever time the deed took place, Macavity was not there!
And they say that all the cats whose wicked deeds are widely known
(I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone)
Are nothing more than agents for the cat who all the time
Just controls their operations, the Napoleon of Crime!
Well I know the first two verses of Robert Burns' "To a Mouse:
Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty
Wi bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murdering pattle.
I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth born companion
An' fellow mortal!
And a good bit of lines here and there of other stuff, but I only know a few entire poems by heart.
This, of course, had music put to it which helps the remembering, but it was originally one of William Blake's poems.
And did those feet in ancient time.
Walk upon England's mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England's pleasant pastures seen!
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England's green & pleasant Land
And Death Shall Have No Dominion by Dylan Thomas is the most recent that I've learnt.
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked, they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.
Memorised it after heaving Above and Beyond's 2011 Essential Mix, which closes with George Clooney reading the first verse over From the Earth by Andrew Bayer.
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