Learning by heart
When I was a child I used to enjoy reading and learning poems at home, encouraged by my parents. I learnt the following little rhyme but have never been able to trace it. I have searched everywhere without success. I’m sure there were further verses which I cannot recall.
A little grey mouse, so plump and sleek,
Crept out from I know not where,
And betwixt the rails of the iron road
Sat nibbling its dainty fare.
A paper of crumbs most happily found
And by somebody cast aside,
Did now for the tiny bright-eyed thing
A heaven-sent meal provide.
It took me a very long time to understand what was meant by ‘the rails of the iron road’.
I continued ‘committing to memory’ various verses, ‘All the world’s a stage’ from ‘As you like it’ being a favourite, along with John Donne’s ‘No man is an island’ and Keats’s ‘Isabella, or The Pot of Basil’, the latter being thrillingly, romantically grotesque for a fifteen-year-old.
Later, my verse reading was directed more to children’s poetry. An all-time favourite, Eleanor Farjeon’s poem ‘Cats sleep anywhere’ is still taught, though I think it might be limited now to speech and drama classes and competitions.
Do you remember
poems from your youth?
