April 18

[Madeleine]

Robert Service was another poet I learned all on my own..

Ah yes, Robert Service. Isn't it too bad that kids don't get to memorize poetry anymore.
We also memorized the Gettysburg Address and the Preamble to the Constitution in school. GA stuck, but the Preamble didn't
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We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare...do hereby ordain...this Constitution for the United States of America.
Dang, that's as far as I can get. And that's a short one.
My kids memorized stuff because we had fun doing it together. We would do like a call and response, so someone would start the poem and then you chipped in the next line and back and forth.

 

[Kay Nein]

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What? You don't know any of this?

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We had two poems to memorize, one fun....
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
The other rather solemn...
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.
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We had to learn In Flanders Field as well. Not so much Lewis Carroll. 'Trees' was another one we had to learn. I think I still have my grade school poetry book somewhere.
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My brother learned Casey at the Bat in 5th grade. Unfortunately, 50 years later he still knows it and recites it far too often.
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My brother learned Casey at the Bat in 5th grade. Unfortunately, 50 years later he still knows it and recites it far too often.

Try being with someone who does the Haka when the urge arises (not your 50 years later, but nearly 40). He did it the other day being goofy and the next morning I said "Why do you have bruises on your arms?"
Yeah well done, beat yourself silly in a war chant, good, yeah, right on.
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The day you posted this, I spent the next hour watching Haka videos on YouTube! I get so sucked in! *lol*