By Milton Horowitz

I’ve made for you a song,
And it may be right or wrong,
But only you can tell me if it’s true.
(Rudyard Kipling talking to Tommy Atkins, his GI Joe.)
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made.
(Robert Browning, “Rabbi Ben Ezra”)
You are old, Father William, the young man said,
And your hair has turned very white.
Yet you incessantly stand on your head.
Do you think at your age that it’s right?
(Folk verse)
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin’ eastward to the sea,
There’s a Burma girl a-settin’, and I know she thinks of me.
(Rudyard Kipling, “Mandalay”)
Rhyme and rhythm helped me, as Shakespeare wrote, to “Speak the speech trippingly on the tongue.” Memorizing poetry is a worthwhile activity in itself, even for the speaker to “show off” to friends and family while reciting with confidence.
From the Fall 2014 Newsletter