These Are a Few of My Favorite Things.

I grew up in an era in which memory was important. At an early age, I knew all the state capitals, all the presidents and a host of mnemonics that would help me remember things like the colors of the rainbow (VIBGYOR) and the Great Lakes (HOMES.) I created PESWAGL for the seven deadly sins. (pride, envy, sloth, wrath, avarice, gluttony, lust) and OAPLG for developmental stages (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital.) I made those memory spurs when I was 19, and remember them still.

Being a baseball fan helped too. Most of us had memorized a litany of important numbers. Like 714 (Ruth's home run total.) .367 (Cobb's lifetime batting average.) .406 (Williams' average in 1941--the last man to bat four-hundred.) 56 (DiMaggio's consecutive-game hitting streak.) I still know those today and a couple hundred more. 

Along the way, memorization (which is somewhat disparaged today) played a big part in my life. I can still conjugate my amo, amas, amat, and decline bonus, bona, bonum and hic, haec, hoc. I know my fair share of things like "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes," (who will guard the guards) which while 2,000 years old is sadly all-too-relevant today.

We were also trained to memorize poems. And while much has slipped throughout the years, I know the first few lines of dozens of classics, from "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may," to "Dulce et decorum est.")

The other night as I was reading, I happened upon a story about the ancient king Mithridates. Mithridates, from very early on in his life, micro-dosed himself with poison to protect himself from those who would try to off him and steal his wealth and his throne.

A. E. Housman's poem "Mithridates, He Died Old" arrived in my head a few moments later--and the Housman's last two lines a synapse or two after that.

Mithridates, He Died Old

There was a king reigned in the East:

There, when kings will sit to feast,

They get their fill before they think

With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.

He gathered all the springs to birth

From the many-venomed earth;

First a little, thence to more,

He sampled all her killing store;

And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,

Sate the king when healths went round.

They put arsenic in his meat

And stared aghast to watch him eat;

They poured strychnine in his cup

And shook to see him drink it up:

They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:

Them it was their poison hurt.

—I tell the tale that I heard told.

Mithridates, he died old.

When my elder daughter was fifteen, she swam in the Empire Games--New York's version of the Olympics. She was the New York State Champion for the mile swim. 

Sometime after winning that crown she had to write an essay on a poem she liked. But she couldn't find any poems that spoke to her. Quickly, we went, again, to Housman. When I read my daughter this poem, she was absolutely floored. Not sure if she remembers it, but I do.

To an Athlete Dying Young

The time you won your town the race

We chaired you through the market-place;

Man and boy stood cheering by,

And home we brought you shoulder-high.

 

Today, the road all runners come,

Shoulder-high we bring you home,

And set you at your threshold down,

Townsman of a stiller town.

 

Smart lad, to slip betimes away

From fields where glory does not stay,

And early though the laurel grows

It withers quicker than the rose.

 

Eyes the shady night has shut

Cannot see the record cut,

And silence sounds no worse than cheers

After earth has stopped the ears.

 

Now you will not swell the rout

Of lads that wore their honours out,

Runners whom renown outran

And the name died before the man.

 

So set, before its echoes fade,

The fleet foot on the sill of shade,

And hold to the low lintel up

The still-defended challenge-cup.

 

And round that early-laurelled head

Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,

And find unwithered on its curls

The garland briefer than a girl’s.

Here are a few more of my favorite poems. For what they're worth.

Two from Ogden Nash. I read these when I was about nine. They taught me poetry could be funny.

Fleas

Adam

Had’em

The Turtle
The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.

And a darker, Nashian couplet that caught my eye some years ago, by David McCord.

Epitaph for a Waiter

By and by
God caught his eye.

My best friend, Fred, who died three years ago taught me this one when his own father died. It's by someone called Leigh Hunt.

Abou Ben Adhem

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)

Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,

And saw, within the moonlight in his room,

Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,

An angel writing in a book of gold:—

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,

And to the presence in the room he said,

"What writest thou?"—The vision raised its head,

And with a look made of all sweet accord,

Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."

"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so,"

Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,

But cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee, then,

Write me as one that loves his fellow men."

The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night

It came again with a great wakening light,

And showed the names whom love of God had blest,

And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.

While somber, this is the poem I love maybe above all others, at least as of this writing. By Ernest Dowson. Maybe I'm just a sucker for Latin

           Vitae Summa Brevis
Spem Nos Vetat  Incohare Longam

The brief sum of life forbids us the hope of enduring long --Horace

 

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,

   Love and desire and hate:

I think they have no portion in us after

   We pass the gate.

 

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:

   Out of a misty dream

Our path emerges for a while, then closes

   Within a dream.

 

I could probably go on and on. These aren't all of my favorites. Only a start. This one, by Matthew Arnold. Not Tom Arnold's dad.

Dover Beach

The sea is calm tonight.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits; on the French coast the light

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!

Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,

Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of sadness in.

 

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

 

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

 

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

But this is enough for now.