Margaret McCarney

Robert Herrick. 1591–1674
 
  
 
248. To the Virgins, to make much of Time
 
  
    
  
     
GATHER ye rosebuds while ye may,
 
  
  Old Time is still a-flying:
 
  
And this same flower that smiles to-day
 
  
  To-morrow will be dying.
 
  
 
  
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
         5
  
  The higher he 's a-getting,
 
  
The sooner will his race be run,
 
  
  And nearer he 's to setting.
 
  
 
  
That age is best which is the first,
 
  
  When youth and blood are warmer;
  10
  
But being spent, the worse, and worst
 
  
  Times still succeed the former.
 
  
 
  
Then be not coy, but use your time,
 
  
  And while ye may, go marry:
 
  
For having lost but once your prime,
  15
  
  You may for ever tarry.
 
  
      


Dante Memorization: Written assessment 
 
Not fondness for my son, nor any claim
Of reverence for my father, nor love I owed
Penelope, to please her, could overcome
 
My longing for experience of the world,
Of human vices and virtue. But I sailed out
On the deep open seas, accompanied
 
By that small company that still had not
Deserted me. . . .
 
‘O brothers who have reached the west,’ I began,
‘Through a hundred thousand perils, surviving all.
 
So little is the vigil we see remain
Still for our senses, that you should not choose
To deny it the experience—beyond the sun
 
Leading us onward—of the world which has
No people in it. Consider well your seed:
You were not born to live as a mere brute does,
 
But for the pursuit of knowledge and the good.’
 
(Canto 26, 91-98, 107-115) 

One can hear Lynn Redgrave reading this passage by going to http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xcwwdc_geoffrey-chaucer-the-canterbury-tal_creation.

General Prologue

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye,
So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages,
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.




Shakespeare: Sonnet 30



When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanished sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoan'd moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.