Each semester, you will be required to memorize a great poem of your choice from this list. You will present this poem in front of the class on the day of your choice. Please do not wait until the end of the semester to begin this assignment.
Please bring a printed copy of your poem on the day you present.
Important Dates:
October 3: Bring chosen poem to class
January 16: Last day to present poem to class
February 27: Bring chosen poem to class
You will be graded on memorization accuracy and quality of presentation. Here is a video with several tips on how to be successful in your poetry presentation.
Sonnets
At the round earths imagin’d corners by John Donne
On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer by John Keats
When I Consider How My Light Is Spent by John Milton
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day, Sonnet #18 by William Shakespeare
Not marble nor the guilded monuments, Sonnet #55 by William Shakespeare
Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Composed upon Westminster Bridge by William Wordsworth
Songs
From Milton: And did those feet by William Blake
The Tyger by William Blake
Afton Water by Robert Burns
A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns
So we’ll go no more a roving by Lord Byron
Break of Day by John Donne
When Malindy Sings by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden
Love (III) by George Herbert
Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins
The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes
To Celia by Ben Jonson
To Althea, from Prison by Richard Lovelace
The Mower’s Song by Andrew Marvell
A Litany in Time of Plague by Thomas Nashe
To Helen by Edgar Allan Poe
Coronach by Sir Walter Scott
Blow, blow, thou winter wind by William Shakespeare
When that I was and a little tiny boy by William Shakespeare
The Splendor Falls by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
From In Memoriam by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Tears, Idle Tears by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Song of Myself, XI by Walt Whitman
They flee from me by Thomas Wyatt
Counsels
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 by Anonymous
Brahma by Ralph Waldo Emerson
From The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám by Edward Fitzgerald
The World by George Herbert
To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick
If-- by Rudyard Kipling
Up-Hill by Christina Rossetti
Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas
Go, lovely rose! by Edmund Waller
The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats
Tales
My Last Duchess by Robert Browning
Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll
Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
anyone lived in a pretty how town by E. E. Cummings
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
Ode on the death of a favorite cat by Thomas Gray
The Oxen by Thomas Hardy
La Belle Dame sans Merci by John Keats
The Owl and the Pussy-cat by Edward Lear
Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson
An Apple Gathering by Christina Rossetti
The Woodspurge by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
All the world’s a stage by William Shakespeare
Casey at the Bat by Ernest Lawrence Thayer
From Snow-Bound, 11:1-40, 116-154 by John Greenleaf Whittier
Meditations
Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold
Stanzas by Emily Bronté
To a Waterfowl by William Cullen Bryant
From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage by Lord Byron
Because I could not stop for Death by Emily Dickinson
Mending Wall by Robert Frost
The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy
The Chambered Nautilus by Oliver Wendall Holmes
Spring and Fall by Gerard Manley Hopkins
To Autumn by John Keats
Snow-Flakes by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Shiloh by Herman Melville
The House on the Hill by Edwin Arlington Robinson
From Adonais, 49-52 by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Mnemosyne by Trumball Stickney
Ulysses by Lord Alfred Tennyson
From In Memoriam by Lord Alfred Tennyson
The Kraken by Lord Alfred Tennyson
A noiseless patient spider by Walt Whitman
Please bring a printed copy of your poem on the day you present.
Important Dates:
October 3: Bring chosen poem to class
January 16: Last day to present poem to class
February 27: Bring chosen poem to class
You will be graded on memorization accuracy and quality of presentation. Here is a video with several tips on how to be successful in your poetry presentation.
Sonnets
At the round earths imagin’d corners by John Donne
On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer by John Keats
When I Consider How My Light Is Spent by John Milton
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day, Sonnet #18 by William Shakespeare
Not marble nor the guilded monuments, Sonnet #55 by William Shakespeare
Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Composed upon Westminster Bridge by William Wordsworth
Songs
From Milton: And did those feet by William Blake
The Tyger by William Blake
Afton Water by Robert Burns
A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns
So we’ll go no more a roving by Lord Byron
Break of Day by John Donne
When Malindy Sings by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden
Love (III) by George Herbert
Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins
The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes
To Celia by Ben Jonson
To Althea, from Prison by Richard Lovelace
The Mower’s Song by Andrew Marvell
A Litany in Time of Plague by Thomas Nashe
To Helen by Edgar Allan Poe
Coronach by Sir Walter Scott
Blow, blow, thou winter wind by William Shakespeare
When that I was and a little tiny boy by William Shakespeare
The Splendor Falls by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
From In Memoriam by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Tears, Idle Tears by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Song of Myself, XI by Walt Whitman
They flee from me by Thomas Wyatt
Counsels
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 by Anonymous
Brahma by Ralph Waldo Emerson
From The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám by Edward Fitzgerald
The World by George Herbert
To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick
If-- by Rudyard Kipling
Up-Hill by Christina Rossetti
Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas
Go, lovely rose! by Edmund Waller
The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats
Tales
My Last Duchess by Robert Browning
Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll
Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
anyone lived in a pretty how town by E. E. Cummings
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
Ode on the death of a favorite cat by Thomas Gray
The Oxen by Thomas Hardy
La Belle Dame sans Merci by John Keats
The Owl and the Pussy-cat by Edward Lear
Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson
An Apple Gathering by Christina Rossetti
The Woodspurge by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
All the world’s a stage by William Shakespeare
Casey at the Bat by Ernest Lawrence Thayer
From Snow-Bound, 11:1-40, 116-154 by John Greenleaf Whittier
Meditations
Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold
Stanzas by Emily Bronté
To a Waterfowl by William Cullen Bryant
From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage by Lord Byron
Because I could not stop for Death by Emily Dickinson
Mending Wall by Robert Frost
The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy
The Chambered Nautilus by Oliver Wendall Holmes
Spring and Fall by Gerard Manley Hopkins
To Autumn by John Keats
Snow-Flakes by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Shiloh by Herman Melville
The House on the Hill by Edwin Arlington Robinson
From Adonais, 49-52 by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Mnemosyne by Trumball Stickney
Ulysses by Lord Alfred Tennyson
From In Memoriam by Lord Alfred Tennyson
The Kraken by Lord Alfred Tennyson
A noiseless patient spider by Walt Whitman