Learning poems during lockdown

During 'Lockdown' (God, that sounds so long ago I can hardly imagine it now) we in the UK were allowed, eventually, to be outside our houses for one bit of exercise each day, separated from other people with the aim of slowing down the spread of COVID.

For some of us in cities, this was  bad and scary and difficult time, but for those of us lucky enough to live somewhere like Woodbridge, it was actually good. We have lots of great places to walk within easy reach, and we had a lot of support in the town from each other if we needed something. And we all got into a habit very early on of going out walking in the morning. And Cro and I took walks of about 3 miles around the land the other side of Martlesham Creek. It is a beautiful area, with woods and open fields and river embankments, and of course as all road and air traffic was pretty much stopped, the fields seemed to be full of birdsong, because you could hear them unmuffled by the ordinary background noise. 

And after about a week Cro and I decided that we would like to do something else in addition to enjoying the nature around us, and we decided to start learning poems by heart on our walks. We learned quite a few, slowly getting the words and the rhythm of them, and also discussing what the poem meant to us. It was a lovely routine, because as you walked the three miles, more and more of the poem stuck in your brain, as if each line was attached to that tree or this field or that clump of river reeds. It was emotional, physical and quite a lyrical experience. 

And of course now, what I did not know then, is that when I walk back to the same places, the poem reappear, as if they had somehow got snagged on bushes, and I can remember walking next to each other discussing and remembering, and sometimes bickering ("No, no, that's not exactly how it goes..."). But it was a very memorable meeting of mental, emotional and physical, just as all the good things in life are. 

There are now a handful of poems that will jump unprompted into my mind when I go down near to the places that we learned them, and it is good to have something added to my 'mental treasury' wherever it comes from. I know that a lot of us, especially those of an ahem older persuasion, have got several poems which we were taught to learn by heart while at school (or which we learned by heart simply because we wanted to). I can remember a few poems from primary school: The Cow, by Robert Louis Stevenson and 'Someone' (came knocking) by Walter De La Mare, for example. I also pretty much know 'Tiger Tiger' by Blake. But to that treasury were added these ones which I think I still have word for word: 

• 'Home thoughts from abroad' by Robert Browning
• 'Ozymandias' by Percy Bysshe Shelley'
• 'Death by water' by TS Eliot
• 'A Shropshire Lad XL' by AE Houseman
• 'Felix Randall' by Gerard Manley Hopkins

And I'd be interested to hear about your own personal treasury and where you learned them.

And finally, if it works, as proof of having learned them, I will try to attach a video (via Youtube) of me declaiming one of them, accompanied by birdsong down by the creek. 

Home thoughts from abroad