Poetry by Heart

I've recently been returning to a project (for want of a better word) that I call An Tobar. An Tobar means "the well" in Gaelic, and it's basically a repertoire of poems that I've memorized.

Why did I do this? Well, I did it for various reasons, but ultimately it's a sort of visceral reaction to the way our society is going. I've often quoted the words of Edward Burne-Jones, the Pre-Raphaelite painter who said: "The more materialistic science becomes, the more angels shall I paint." The more our lives are lived in cyberspace and on screens, the more we drift into a world of artificial intelligence and whatnot, the stronger need I feel to have a decent amount of oral lore inside my own head. 

Having said that, I've neglected An Tobar for years at this stage, and I'm only returning to it recently. It's definitely rusty. Some of these poems I could recite at the drop of a hat (another cliché I like), word perfect or close to it.. With others, I'd struggle with a few lines here and there. And with some others, I've probably lost most of the words. I'll have to build it up again. (Or dig it again, perhaps, given my "well" metaphor?)

I've sometimes recited some of these poems at social gatherings, principally "The Raven" by Poe and "Ulysses" by Tennyson. However, I've generally been discouraged by the reception. I can see people's eyes glaze over pretty quickly.

Revisiting An Tobar again, I made the decision to drop some poems that would just never "take", for whatever reason. One was "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" by Thomas Gray. This poem is justly one of the most beloved in all of English poetry-- but, for whatever reason, it's never been one of my own favourites. And, for some reason, it wouldn't "stick" in my memory, and it took a lot of "maintenance". I memorized it because I thought that, being such a general favourite, it might be a poem people would like to hear recited. That never happened.

Other poems that kept sliding from my memory were "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas and several of Shakespeare's sonnets.

One of the reasons I started neglecting An Tobar is that I had an unhealthy "not an inch" attitude towards it. I didn't want to give up any poem once I'd committed it to memory. I've got over that now.

Some of the selections are odd, I know. I'd be astonished if anybody else had ever heard of "A Fragment" by Alfred Austin. This is a relic of a plan to memorize a poem (or passage of poetry) by every Poet Laureate of England. These are the kinds of whims that seize me. Anyway, many of the Poets Laureate are completely forgotten now and didn't leave behind anything memorable. I've dropped most of the Poet Laureate pieces, but "A Fragment" is charming.

Will this list be of any interest to anybody? I don't know. Here it is, anyway.

Death of an Irishwoman by Michael Hartnett

Snow by Louis MacNeice

The Fool by Patrick Pearse

Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The Burning of the Leaves by Laurence Binyon

“Our revels now are ended” by William Shakespeare

“To Helen” by Edgar Allan Poe

“Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” by William Shakespeare

On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer by John Keats

“Ay, but to die…” by William Shakespeare

Lines Written on Westminster Bridge by William Wordsworth

The Wayfarer by Patrick Pearse

The Kraken by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

A Birthday by Christina Rossetti

Heraclitus by William Johnson Cory

The Owl by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The Planster’s Vision by John Betjeman

“My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun” by William Shakespeare

“When I Consider” by John Milton

“Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth” by Arthur Hugh Clough

“The Burning Babe” by Robert Southwell

Remember by Christina Rossetti

The Song of the Strange Ascetic by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

“Forget Not Yet” by Sir Thomas Wyatt

“The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe

“September 1913” by William Butler Yeats

The Workman’s Friend by Flann O'Brien

“If—” by Rudyard Kipling

When I was One-and-Twenty by Alfred Edward Housman

Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now by Alfred Edward Housman

Annus Mirabilis by Philip Larkin

Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death by William Butler Yeats

How Do I Love Thee? by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Yonder See the Morning Blink by Alfred Edward Housman

Under the Wide and Starry Sky by Robert Louis Stevenson

Into My Heart an Air That Kills by Alfred Edward Housman

Peace by Henry Vaughan

She Walks in Beauty by George Gordon, Lord Byron

Acquainted with the Night by Robert Frost

John Anderson My Jo, John by Robert Burns

When He Who Adores Thee by Thomas Moore

Golden Stockings by Oliver St. John Gogarty

Ringsend by Oliver St. John Gogarty

Shakespeare by Matthew Arnold

Adlestrop by Edward Thomas

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Fisherman by William Butler Yeats

The World’s a Stage by Hilaire Belloc

No Second Troy by William Butler Yeats

All Things Can Tempt Me by William Butler Yeats

On a House Shaken by the Land Agitation by William Butler Yeats

Aedh Tells of the Rose in His Heart by William Butler Yeats

The Song of Wandering Aengus by William Butler Yeats

Red Hanrahan’s Song about Ireland by William Butler Yeats

“Ring out, wild bells…” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

“I to my perils…” by Alfred Edward Housman

Surprised by Joy by William Wordsworth

When I Set Out to Lyonesse by Thomas Hardy

Easter 1916 by William Butler Yeats

The Coat by William Butler Yeats

Song of an Old Philosopher by Walter Savage Landor

The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats

Raglan Road by Patrick Kavanagh

Thomas MacDonagh by Francis Ledwidge

The Lake Isle of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats

When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats

The Planter's Daughter by Austin Clarke

Advent by Patrick Kavanagh

Ode to a Grecian Urn by John Keats

“Oh friend, I know not…” by William Wordsworth

Jerusalem by William Blake

The Eagle by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

“Should fickle hands…” by Alfred Austin

“This royal throne of kings…” by William Shakespeare

“Happy the man” by John Dryden

While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Nahum Tate

The Beatitudes by St. Matthew

Everyone Suddenly Started Singing by Siegfried Sassoon

Invictus by William Ernest Henley

I Used to Think All Poets Were Byronic by Wendy Cope

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven by William Butler Yeats

To My Daughter by Thomas Kettle

Epitaph on a Tyrant by Wystan Hugh Auden

Epic by Patrick Kavanagh

“The Quality of Mercy” by William Shakespeare

To Althea from Prison by Richard Lovelace

So We’ll Go No More a-Roving by George Gordon, Lord Byron

To Lucasta, Going to the Wars by Richard Lovelace

“Breathes there a man…” by Sir Walter Scott

The Daffodils by William Wordsworth

Determination by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Ecce Puer by James Joyce

Dublin by Louis MacNeice

The Rainy Day by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A Psalm of Life by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“The distant Seychelles are not so remote…” by Osbert Lancaster