Even if you don’t know your Blake from your Burns, your Wordsworth from your Plath, you’ve still probably got a verse that you can’t get out of your head.
For me there’s two, firstly:
“Tyger Tyger burning bright.
In the forests of the night.
What immortal hand or eye
could frame thy fearful symmetry?”
It’s by William Blake and I learned it at primary school many moons ago. For some reason this first verse has just stuck with me.
I also like the joyful Wordsworth classic:
“I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils.”
Again just the first verse is committed to memory but I’ve got the whole thing pinned to my fridge and my challenge for 2015 was to learn it by heart. However, we’re in November and I’m not making great progress . . .
Maybe by the next National Poetry Day I’ll know my lines!
