FRIDAY FAVORITES - A FAVORITE POEM

The Road Not Taken

(Robert Frost)

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

A FAVORITE POEM

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
By Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Our Mountains by Big Girl

The mountains of my home are beautiful, rising up in great lumps and rolls. Unlike their cousins of the west, they do not reach for the sky in proud majesty. They remain close to the earth, humble in their way. Friendly, they protect those who live around them.

Their covering is a heavy coat of trees which they change to suit the season. In summer it is green and practical, but after awhile they seem to grow tired of this. Fall comes and they put on marvelous colors of orange, red, and yellow. Then, as if repenting of this extravagance, they wear the dullest brown they can find for winter. Even then they can not resist dressing up in beautiful white now and then. By the time spring comes around their oath to remain plain has weakened considerably, but not so much that they are willing to put on their fall finery. Instead, they begin to wear green and thus start the cycle all over again.

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POETRY

We have been memorizing poetry for quite a while now, and as I said elsewhere, we focus on one poet at a time while memorizing his or her poem. I will read a poem each day by the particular poet we are studying. We keep the memorized poems, along with the pages I make for the bulletin board (with the poet's picture, country, and birth and death dates) in a notebook. The girls review the old poems by each of them reciting one each day. We do those the same way we do our current memory work: Big Girl will recite the poem while Little Girl looks at it and corrects any mistakes, then they switch. I started doing this when I realized that I was memorizing the poems myself just by looking at them and correcting the girls when they would recite them. So it serves double duty.

Here is a list of the poems we have memorized so far with their authors. At first, we did simpler ones, that were mostly by poets who wrote specifically for children. I tried to choose the most "important" and well known poems and poets. Here is the main site I use as our source.

Ooey Gooey - Anonymous

The Germ - Ogden Nash

The Vulture - Hilaire Belloc

It's Dark in Here - Shel Silverstein

The Land of Counterpane - Robert Lewis Stevenson

How Doth the Little Crocodile - Lewis Carroll

Some One - Walter de la Mare

Silver - Walter de la Mare

Hurt No Living Thing - Christina Rossetti

The Duel - Eugene Field

Jabberwocky - Lewis Carol

I Chased a Dragon Through the Woods - Jack Prelutsky

The Tyger - William Blake

Trees - Alfred Joyce Kilmer

The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Paul Revere's Ride - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (only did part of this one)

O Captain! My Captain! - Walt Whitman

Charge of the Light Brigade - Alfred Lord Tennyson (half of this one)

Daffodils - William Wordsworth

Eldorado - Edgar Allan Poe

Because I Could Not Stop for Death - Emily Dickinson

Old Ironsides - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening - Robert Frost (my favorite poem and poet!)

The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost

Daddy Fell Into the Pond - Alfred Noyes

The Owl and the Pussycat - Edward Lear

The Spider and the Fly - Mary Botham Howitt

The Arrow and the Song - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

And if anyone is wondering "Why memorize poetry?" Here are some good articles. I don't agree with everything in them, being a Christian, but there is some good stuff to be pulled from them. The "disagreeable" parts will be obvious to other Christians. (Just philosophy type stuff.)

Poetry Memorization

In Defense of Memorization

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