I was in the library on Saturday, looking for a book to bring to Pt. Lincoln. I was on my way out when I saw this book in the display shelf next to the exits. It was a book of poems. Poems that most of us would have studied or read during our school days.
So I picked it up and scanned through it and true enough, poem after poem that I’ve read, studied and written commentaries about came up.
Owen- Dolce et decorum est.
That may be the only poem I can still write a commentary on. We did so much with that.
Remember Daddy by Sylvia Plath? The Ballad of Reading Gaol? The rime of the ancient mariner (THE longest poem ever ever ever. I only remember the albatross part…). Digging by Seamus Heaney (I think seamus is his first name…) I believe I wrote my final exam commentary on this… or some sort of exam. Or maybe it was my oral commentary? Whatever. It was probably one of my proudest english lit moments
To be able to complete my oral commentary.
And finally… going back all the way to Grade 7. My first English Literature experience. I was in Ms Carlson’s class and she made us memorise poems. I couldn’t figure out why. i memorised the double double toil and trouble part of Shakespere’s Macbeth. And some other poem which I don’t remember now but I think it was about the last moment’s of someone’s life or something. o.O
But the one I remember most and probably my favouritest poem of all is called Loveliest of trees, the cherry now by A.E Housman.
It goes like this:
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
An since to look at things in bloom.
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go,
To see the cherry hung with snow.
So Ms. Carlson made us memorize this. It was spring in Seoul and our campus had a couple of cherry blossom trees. So we took a walk to the cherry blossoms. They’re not as beautiful as the ones you see in Hokkaido maybe… but they were beautiful alright. We gathered around the tree and recited the poem. Ms. Carlson did it with passion. I guess some students did too. But I had only memorized half of it at that time, so I sucked. But it was something I never forgot. Strange as it may sound, it was one of those vivid memories of middle school I had.
I wish it was spring already. It’s freakin cold.