To know by heart

The recent Chronicle Review had an article entitled, "Why memorize a poem?" The pretext was what better thing to do when in the dark with a flashlight (see Sandy).  In the fullness of the article, though, she came to this:

"When everything else has been taken from you, a memorized poem remains. It is there to remind you of who you once were, who you are now, and who you might be. It is there to remind you that there is a world beyond the self, a world in which someone once joined word and word and word to make something that had never existed before, a world in which the possibility for change, for seeing differently, is always there. It is there to remind you that you are not alone. When you recite a poem, you are in conversation with another."

As it turns out, ol' Dan has a repertoire of memorized poems that he pulls out on various occasions; mainly for a kind of comfort. Most of them I can get through in pretty good shape:

Casey at the Bat
The Children's Hour
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Mending Wall
Gunga Din
If
Because I could not stop for Death
There is no Frigate like a Book
The Martyrdom of Bishop Farrar
No Man is an Island

In the spirit of the moment, I offer this archival footage of a poem I learned in my front yard one June when I was about thirteen (It was in a World Almanac that was a gift for passing "with flying colors.")
It was recorded in my former digs, the best ever: the 1908 section of ACS.