Memorization Challenge: Disturb Us Lord

Who knew that as I faced one of the busiest weeks of the year I would turn to the inspiring words of an age-old English privateer. In fact, this week will mark the close of what has been an intensely dense three months, packed with studies, performances, writing projects and presentations. It's for this reason that the posts have been sparse lately.

Here I am contradicting the very advice I've posted on my own blog; I've made myself so busy that I can't appreciate the little things, or share them, like I need to. On the other hand, all of us have moments from time to time when we can look back at an arduous trail, once so barren and threatening, and in our swollen feelings of accomplishment see instead a verdant walkway filled with gentle sunshine. These difficult periods in our life are what make us. They test us and try us. They work like a whetstone against our purest character.

Here's a personal example. I have a little brother, Chip, who loves to play basketball. A year ago he was placed on the seventh grade basketball team with a group of boys a year older than him. The resulting basketball season didn't award him much playing time and it certainly didn't inflate any of his stats. It was a school of hard knocks, playing against boys that were bigger and more aggressive than him on the court.

This year he signed up to play basketball in the city's parks and recreation league where he was put on a team with kids his own age. He had his first game this week and, truth be told, had a quiet first half. But after half-time, when his coach gave him the go-ahead to take some shots, that brother of mine stepped up and took full advantage of the experience his proverbial rougher seas had given him the year before.

It started with a jump shot, nothing too flashy. He threw the ball up and it came down, nothing but net. The next time down the court, he pulled up a few feet from behind the three-point arc and launched another. Swish! The momentum started to build and before the end of the quarter he sank two more jumpers. When the fourth quarter began he revved up his engines again. As he drained shot after shot, the spectators in the gymnasium slowly worked themselves into a mild frenzy. The streak continued and each time he launched the ball towards the hoop, silence filled the room until the net's beautiful "swoosh" sound cued the the crowd to go wild. By the end of the game, he scored 18 points in the second half alone and for a seventh grader, that's not bad. Hey, for any player that's not bad.

Chip's performance illustrated a difficult lesson we could all remember more often. It takes hard times to make us great. Sir Francis Drake, the great naval captain, understood that all too well when he signed on to fight the Spanish Armada on behalf on England or when he circumnavigated the Earth in the 1500s. His credo was beautifully immortalized in a prayer, attributed to him, called Disturb Us Lord.

My favorite line in this is "Where storms will show your mastery; Where losing sight of land, We shall find the stars." It's absolutely moving.

Disturb Us Lord

Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land
We shall find the stars.

We ask You to push back
The horizons of ours hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.

-Sir Francis Drake 1577

Memorization Challenge: The Tables Turned

I've been trying to take better notice of the beauty that surrounds me in nature. It's not easy. My mind gets so filled with checklists and deadlines that it's hard to slow down, breathe in for a second and smile at what life is offering. I'm in the thralls, or maybe the trenches, of formal education and assignments stack high. While I was buried in books and papers this week's poem hit me like a ton of bricks.

The piece is called The Tables Turned by William Wordsworth. There are several phrases that struck a vibrant chord with me, especially because of how busy I make myself. Somewhere in my head I hear my father's voice telling me he's concerned I'm spreading myself too thin. Don't worry Dad, I'm writing the worth of Wordsworth's words.... I'm sorry... I couldn't resist.

Wordsworth was a major English poet during the Romantic Period. He was born in the Lake District. His mostly absentee father taught him poetry and introduced him to authors like Milton and Shakespeare. He also sent little William to Hawkshead Grammar School in Lancashire. Wordsworth saw his first writing success when a sonnet he wrote was published in The European Magazine.

Wordsworth published a book of poetry with Samuel Taylor Coleridge called Lyrical Ballads. When writing the preface to the book Wordsworth noted that he wanted to write in the "true language of men" and insisted poetry is a "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin in emotion recollected in tranquillity."

He was close with his sister, Dorothy, for all of his life. He lost a brother in a shipwreck. He lost another brother to the clergy. He traveled to Revolutionary France and fell in love with a woman there, with whom he had a child. He married a childhood friend.

Wordsworth's poetry sadly focuses on separation, grief and death, but he also is recognized for his ideas about the human mind and its connection to nature. His idealistic lines should be taken with a grain of salt though because the guy But his poetry still hits home for the busy-minded like myself. He writes like someone who knows what it is to feel time slip through his fingers; for that reason I feel a particular connection to his poetry.

In The Tables Turned a few lines really move the waters, so to speak. The first is the idea of a "meddling intellect." The power of the human mind is an incredible force. Sometimes, though, it doesn't know when to stop working. It analyzes, breaks down, compares, contrasts, accepts, rejects-- enough is enough. We "murder to dissect." Sometimes it's important to just look around and take in the world for how it is. It's great to admire and accept bits of life without carrying the burden of "figuring things out."

I love this poem because it sounds like a friend reminding me to take it easy and enjoy every moment.



The Tables Turned

Up! Up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you'll grow double:
Up! Up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?

The sun above the mountain's head,
A freshening lustre mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening's yellow.

Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There's more of wisdom in it.

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless--
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth by by cheerfulness.

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:--
We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.

-William Wordsworth

Memorization Test: The Apology

The other day as I was walking from appointment to appointment when I noticed that autumn had arrived. Right under my nose it had been delicately painting the trees, starting with the highest leaves and trickling to the bottom. While traveling beneath the limbs that extended over the sidewalks I was struck by all the deep seasonal colors.

Looking toward the mountains I noticed that the night before a slight snow had bleached some of the cliffs. The mixtures of whites, browns, oranges, yellows and greens were breathtaking. Where had the summer gone and how did I not notice nature's firework display until that morning?

As luck would have it, in the library there was an exhibit featuring Romanticism inspired by national parks. I can't believe how many incredible writers America produced during this period. In the display, writings from these authors on the importance of the interaction between man and nature. Among them were some words from Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

Emerson was born in Boston and it is a small wonder that he fell in love with nature there. An autumn in Boston is definitely on my bucket list. 

He went to Harvard College at 14. When he turned 23 he moved south, looking for warmer climates first in South Carolina and then in Florida. There he befriended the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte and engaged in enlightening discussion about religion and philosophy. At the same time he witnessed the brutality of the slave trade, still thriving in Florida.

Emerson faced trauma in his private life. Several of his siblings died while they were still relatively young. His first wife died from tuberculosis only two years after their marriage. After her death he left his job as minister of a church, arguing that the structure of worship there only allowed the commemoration of Christ in an antiquated fashion. In reality, the death of his wife shook him out of his stalwart convictions. He craved the freedom to pursue a badly needed catharsis. 

He toured Europe, meeting other influential authors like William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and John Stuart Mill. When he returned to the States he married again and bought a house in Concord, Massachusetts, which he named Bush. There he spent out the rest of his life.

Emerson was a pioneer of the transcendentalist movement. At the time the movement was considered a blend of atheism and individualism. Personally though, I question the criticism that Emerson faced regarding his opinions on deity. He was opposed to the established order of worship at the time. He was also opposed to the theories developed about Jesus throughout historic theological scholarship. He rightly recognized gaps in the doctrine and the established practice. 

The Emerson Clan

He had revolutionary ideas that assessed the motives for which men make their pursuits. You could say he was an advocate of nature, but for him it wasn't about nature; it was about philosophy. It's not about just appreciating nature's beauty; it's understanding the role of self in the scheme of something much larger. He was interested in going beyond the socially constructed expectations for mankind and learning, from something more perfect, what he was meant to understand.

I appreciate Emerson's ideas because they remind me to look beyond what is expected. In his poem, The Apology, he contrasts the ambition of industry with the extra bounty available everywhere but left unnoticed. 

I hope I can live the spirit of this poem better and learn to reap a second crop from the acres of my life.

The Apology

Think me not unkind or rude

   That I walk alone in grove and glen;

I go to the god of the wood

   To fetch his words to men.

Tax not my sloth that I

   Fold my arms beside the brook;

Each cloud that floated in the sky

   Writes a letter in my book.

Chide me not laborious band

   For the idle flowers I brought;

Every aster in my hand

   Goes home loaded with a thought.

There was never mystery

   But 'tis figured in the flowers;

Was never secret history 

   But birds tell it in the bowers.

One harvest from thy field

   Homeward brought the oxen strong;

A second crop thine acres yield,

   Which I gather in a song.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Memorization Test: Song of Hope

Every now and then we all have to cut our losses. There are days when, for some reason, nothing goes right. Some say it's getting up on the wrong side of the bed or it's just not their day. Regardless, it is a unifying human experience to sometimes wish a day would just end.

Thomas Hardy was the son of a stonemason, born in Dorset England. At 16, after being educated at Mr. Last's Academy for Young Gentlemen, he went off to become an architect's apprentice. He eventually spent some time at King's College and found his way into some interesting employment.

Once, Hardy was in charge of excavating a graveyard to make way for a railroad. I can only imagine what it must have been like to wake up each morning during that job. Moving the dead after they've been buried has to be disconcerting.

Thomas Hardy and Emma Lavinia Gifford

Later, Hardy fell in love and married Emma Lavinia Gifford, a woman he stood by for 28 years, although at the end of her life they had fallen out with one another. Even so, when she died, Hardy was never quite the same. He ended up marrying another woman who was almost forty years younger than him, presumably a literary fan. He was said to dictate his last poem to her while he was on his deathbed.

Hardy with Florence Dugdale,
his second wife

I sometimes wonder what it must have been like for Hardy the year after his first wife died. I wonder what he agonized over and what he regretted the most. There really is no pain deeper than the crushing realization that the window of opportunity to right a wrong has closed. It stings deeply to gaze into the past and recognize those indelible moments when we, ourselves, committed our most grave errors. After 30 years of marriage, I can only imagine how intensely Hardy must have wished he could have wound back the clocks in order to wipe whatever feud had divided his marriage. For me, his second marriage said everything. What kind of serious interpersonal relationship can a widower, especially one as intelligent as Hardy, hope to achieve by marrying a woman 40 years his junior?

Even in the throes of this despair, the lines of Song of Hope shine like sunlight. They represent the eternal resilience of mankind. That no matter what hole we find ourselves in, if we choose, we can find a new beginning when the sun comes up again. In the darkest times of my own life, I've felt this sentiment, so beautifully put into words by Thomas Hardy.

Song of Hope

O sweet To-morrow! -
     After to-day
     There will away
This sense of sorrow.
Then let us borrow
Hope, for the gleaming
Soon will be streaming,
     Dimmed by no gray -
     No gray!

While the winds wing us
     Sighs from the Gone,
     Nearer to dawn
Minute beats bring us;
Then there will sing us
Larks of a glory
Waiting our story
     Further anon -
     Anon!

Doff the black token
     Don the red shoon,
     Right and retune
Viol-strings broken;
Null the words spoken
In speeches of rueing,
The night cloud is hueing,
     To-morrow shines soon -
     Shines soon!

-Thomas Hardy

Memorization Test: Ozymandias

There are times when I can't sleep at night because I feel so restless. A million thoughts fly around and rather than counting them I indulge myself in imagination. There are so many plans and ideas that I want to realize and I understand ever more fully that the ambition of man is without limit. The desire to leave our indelible mark on the world is not mine alone. It's illustrated by the millions of graffiti artists living among us. Some spray on walls, some write books, some paint canvases while others work to better the community, start a business or develop a family legacy. Somehow, some way, we want to be remembered, if even by a scratch on the wall.

Percy Bysshe Shelley touched on this concept in this week's memorization challenge, Ozymandias. What is an Ozymandias? Why, an Egyptian pharaoh named Ramesses of course. The poem carries a haunting message from the past, that even a man as powerful as Ramesses the Great fell victim to the steady, endless power of entropy. In the poem, the only evidence left of this great pharaoh are a few ruins in the desert, soon to be vanished by sweeping sands, and it's accompanying pedestal inscribed with his name.

I love the contrast at play here when we compare Ramesses the Great against Percy Shelley. Shelley was a Romantic poet who didn't even see his poems to any great success during his own life. He died at age 29. In school he faced daily group bullying sessions in which his offenders tore his books and his clothes. He had a crackly soprano voice as a child, easy to ridicule. He was also a science-driven mischievous kid and as a final prank to his school he blew up the tree in the yard with gunpowder. Good times! (Yeah try that one today...) When he left school he didn't have a friend to his name.

At Oxford, he eventually published a pamphlet called The Necessity of Atheism, which led to his expulsion and an eventual falling out with his father. Later he got in a tiff with one of his only friends from university, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, when he continually made advances on Shelley's wife. In all fairness, one could doubt Shelley was really in love with her. They reportedly married to save her from a suicidal depression and they eventually separated. Awkward story, Shelley later fell in love with some other girl and threatened suicide if she didn't return his affections, taking a leaf out of his first wife's book of romantic strategy.

He was an aristocrat that opposed the monarchy. His own circle of peers must have detested him. He lost custody of his kids when his first wife committed suicide.

Yet, he seemed to understand that with life's hills come valleys as well. In his poem Ode to the West Wind his insights in the line, "If winter comes, can Spring be far behind?"are inspired. Shelley, who (by a quick glance at his resumé) doesn't seem qualified to talk about optimism, teaches a lesson in perseverance.

What's more important, Shelley, notwithstanding empty successes during his difficult life, writes with a tragic wisdom. In Ozymandias, he exposes the impending effect time has on great accomplishments. At the same time, for me, the poem is a type of challenge. Where Ramesses the Great failed at creating a legacy that endured the test of time, perhaps we can succeed. Shelley's legacy, for example, was much stronger after his death than during his life.

When working toward our own personal legacies, I hope we don't build our houses on the sand. A giant's footsteps will vanish quickly in the sands, but the feet of the smallest bird will remain for years if it walks across wet cement.




Ozymandias


I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet remain, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"I am Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
the lone and level sands stretch far away.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1818



This is a harder poem for the memorization challenge because there isn't an easy rhyme scheme or a musical meter. Good luck!

Memorization Test: Darest Thou Now O Soul

Walt Whitman, in many ways, is like the wizard of poetry. He at least looks a little like Gandalf the Grey. In fact, it is entirely possible that Tolkein, who lived a century after Whitman, found some inspiration for his character in "The Great Grey Poet."

For me, there has always been a shroud of mystery around his life. Even after reading up on him, he feels more distant from me than other authors. In all odds, it is most likely because of the way he writes. Many older poets have a structure that I can relate to. Rhyming couplets, for example, offer just enough rules for a reader to really get in an author's head. We can start to expect a certain ebb and flow from the poems and consequentially feel like we are understanding the way he or she thinks. Walt Whitman, on the other hand, is sometimes called the Father of Free Verse, and in his writing some conventional rules start to go out the window.

Not only will this make the week's Memorization Test a little more difficult (learning rhyming stanzas is definitely easier), it will also make Whitman's sentence structure a little more abstract.

But what do you expect from a man like Walt Whitman? His time did not have the luxury of order. He was born into a poor family with eight brothers and sisters. Three of his brothers were named after founding fathers. When he was a kid he was kissed on the cheek by the Marquis de Lafayette on the Fourth of July. He finished his formal education at age 11.

The man was a volunteer nurse during the Civil War. Later, employed in the Attorney General's office, his job was to interview Confederate soldiers seeking Presidential pardon. If there were ever a confusing time to be an American, it was during his generation. His opinions on slavery illustrate well the polarizing struggle he faced in his turbulent times. He was opposed to extending slavery, he was for the abolishment of slavery and he later saw the end of slavery as a danger to democracy, the root of America.

Whitman was admired by some other incredible authors. When his first book of poetry came out Ralph Waldo Emerson praised him heavily for his work. Later he would be visited by Henry David Thoreau. These men would stand by him while critics railed on his work for being overtly sexual, severely tarnishing his reputation in the public eye.

Darest Thou Now, O Soul, is a beautiful poem that I've found myself repeating during hard times. It is a dialogue from a man addressed to his inner self, his courage. There is something universally mysterious and daunting about the unknown paths in our lives. For a rising generation with college degrees and little work, I think this poem has inestimable value. It assesses the difficulty there is in being a pioneer, an explorer, and carving your own path. It calculates the risks and payoffs of blazing a new trails.

It reminds me of a few intensely spiritual moments in my life. They all stick out in my mind. Moments when I collect information, advice and opinions from those I hold close, and then walk towards my decision, never looking back for a second, and, while squinting at the ever-approaching fog, repeat to myself over and over: Darest Thou Now, O Soul?


Darest Thou Now, O Soul

Darest Thou Now, O Soul
Walk with me toward the Unknown Region,
Where neither ground is for the feet, nor any path to follow?

No map there, nor guide,
Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,
Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land.

I know it not, O Soul;
Nor dost thou-- It is a blank before us;
All waits, undream'd of, in that region -- that inaccessible land.

Till, when the ties loosen,
All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,
Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds bound us.

Then we burst forth -- we float,
In Time and Space, O Soul -- prepared for them;
Equal, equipt at last -- (O Joy! O Fruit of All!) them to fulfill, O Soul.

-Walt Whitman 1900

Memorization Test: Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

Robert Frost is certainly one of the more beloved poets of the 1900s. His poem, The Road Less Traveled, is printed on posters hanging in nearly every American ninth-grade classroom. That poem offers a close up look of a man who truly cut his own path through life.

This week's challenge, Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening is one of Frost's standout poems and communicates deeply to the eternal soul of the individual.

From an early age Frost, son of a newspaper editor, felt his calling was poetry. He spent all of two months at Dartmouth College before ending his formal education. He sold his first poem for $15 and was so proud of his accomplishment he marched down to his girlfriend, Elinor, to propose to her.

Frost is known for rural themes in his writing, but growing up he was a city boy. His true love of the outdoors matured when he worked at his grandfather's farm. While working there for nine years he would rise early in the morning and write what would become some of his most successful poetry. I can sometimes feel that early morning farm atmosphere when I read Frost's work. It's quiet, reverent, mysterious.

Frost went on to teach at various colleges and, despite his meager two years at university, earned over 40 honorary degrees from schools like Harvard, Oxford and Princeton. It demonstrates that while education is important, dedicated passion and vision can be just as valuable.

A man plagued throughout his life with deep personal loss (he would only be outlived by two of six children), he perhaps knew better than most the depth of the human heart. His relationship with rural life seemed spiritually mixed with his relationship with a higher power.

The poem touches me because it reminds me of important moments in my life. Every now and then we come across a simple scene; it can be a visual scenario or even just a feeling in the air, that makes us feel as though the veil between the Earth and the hereafter is much thinner than we ever thought. It's almost as if a voice whispers to our heart to remind us of a greater purpose. Frost remarked that he saw the scene in the poem as if it had been a hallucination after writing all through the night.

Even the rhyme scheme of this poem is reflective of our life here. We establish our own little routines, like the rhyme on lines one, two and four of each stanza, but some new experience comes along to further shape our lives, line three. That new line dictates our new routine until, finally, a brush with some eternal truth changes us. It's beautiful.


Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

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.

-Robert Frost 1922




You can actually see a video of Robert Frost reading his poem here. Word of warning, he is not a performer. He's a writer.
Robert Frost Reading This Poem


Also, Eric Whitacre, arguably the most genius composer of our time wrote a choral piece using this poem for his lyric. He forgot to check the copyright date on the poem though and upon the song's completion he was not legally allowed to publish. In response, a friend, Charles Anthony Silvestri, was commissioned to write a poem using the exact same meter and rhyme scheme. The resulting song "Sleep" was an enormous success. However, it wasn't hard to take the words of Frost's poem and switch them out for Silvestri's lyrics so video of choirs singing the song the way it was originally intended is available. The last stanza is particularly haunting in the song.

If you have five minutes, plug in the old earphones, close your eyes and enjoy.
Listen to Whitacre's interpretation here

Memorization Test: The Builders

This week's test was a little more arduous. The poem is a bit longer than last week's and the author uses words in a way that at first tripped up my mouth. The poem is called The Builders by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Longfellow is considered one of the great American poets and, rare for artists, was actually highly appreciated during his own life. In an age when poetry was read like TV is watched today, Longfellow became a superstar. Admirers asked for his autograph through letters and in person; to criticize him was a major social faux pas (a faux pas Edgar Allen Poe was all too eager to commit by the way). He also had quite the circle of friends, including Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

He was a professor at Bowdoin and Harvard. He knew Latin, French, Spanish, Portuguese and German.... and English. He lived through terrible grief brought to him by the death of two wives (his second wife died at home when her dress caught on fire while she was sealing a few locks of their children's hair in envelopes... absolutely terrifying). He received honorary degrees from both Oxford and Cambridge. He was summoned for a visit by the queen of England. His Robert of Sicily was translated by the Emperor of Brazil. Through it all, he did not glory in his popularity.

They guy had a vision for success. He built something incredible with his time and talents. His poem, The Builders, is an intimate sermon from a master on how to become successful and maximize the efforts of our time. I feel very comfortable taking these words to heart because I know that he followed his own advice. Had he not, this blog post wouldn't even be here now would it?

For me there are two bits of striking advice that stand out from the stanzas. The first: every thing we do will build to something larger. Whether it be working out, writing a novel or playing video games. It all builds up some grander habit, attitude, personality, etc... So we have to be very careful how we shape each day.

The second: laboring our darndest on things no one will ever see is just as important as working hard on the big show-stoppers. For Longfellow it seems clear that the quality of our fate is a reflection of the quality of our character.

The Builders

All are architects of Fate,
Working in these walls of Time;
Some with massive deeds and great,
Some with ornaments of rhyme

Nothing useless is, or low;
Each thing in its place is best;
And what seems but idle show
Strengthens and supports the rest.

For the structure that we raise,
Time is with materials filled;
Our to-days and yesterdays
Are the blocks with which we build.

Truly shape and fashion these;
Leave no yawning gaps between;
Think not, because no man sees,
Such things will remain unseen.

In the elder days of Art,
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part;
For the Gods see everywhere.

Let us do our work as well,
Both the unseen and the seen;
Make the house, where Gods may dwell,
Beautiful, entire, and clean.

Else our lives are incomplete,
Standing in these walls of Time,
Broken stairways, where the feet
Stumble as they seek to climb.

Build to-day, then, strong and sure,
With a firm and ample base;
And ascending and secure
Shall to-morrow find its place.

Thus alone can we attain
To those turrets, where the eye
Sees the world as one vast plain,
And one boundless reach of sky.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
From The Seaside and the Fireside published in 1846

Memorization Test: Invictus

As part of my pursuit for mental strength I've taken to doing a weekly memorization challenge. I'm starting with poetry because the meter and rhythm makes it easier to remember. Later I might go on to prose, which I find can be entirely more difficult. The point is to memorize at least twenty lines weekly. Learning to improve the memory is an intensely valuable ability when trying to sharpen the mind so I hope that these memorization tests will help me in my journey to manhood.

On Fridays I make a selection for the new week and each Thursday I test myself to see if I've successfully completed my goal.

If you'd like, you can follow along and take on these memorization challenges too, or you can find your own poems. I know at least for me it's easier to memorize words I believe in.

This first poem is called Invictus, written in 1875 by William Ernest Henley. Invictus is latin for "unconquerable" and the poem really resonates with me because it highlights one of the strongest traits of humanity: the power we have to choose our outlook on any situation. No matter how "charged with punishments the scroll" we can break the chains of our circumstance.

I also enjoy this poem because the words don't fall flat; the author had the chops to pen them sincerely. Henley had his leg amputated at 18 and the doctors insisted they needed to amputate his other leg in order to save his life from tuberculosis. Refusing the diagnosis, Henley's life was spent in hospitals trying to overcome the illness through various painful surgeries. Notwithstanding, he completed law school and went on to become editor of the Scots Observer in Scotland.

Fun fact: Robert Louis Stevenson was so moved by the courage of the maimed William Henley that he based a character off of him in Treasure Island. Perhaps you've heard of Long John Silver? Through this character and the life of this, his most famous poem, Henley is deceased but not forgotten.

Invictus 

"Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul."

-William Ernest Henley 1875