Everyone over 40 was shocked recently by an episode of Jeopardy! in which none of the contestants could recall the Our Father. The clue went: “Matthew 6:9 says, 'Our Father, which art in heaven,' This 'be thy name. '” The answer (“What is ‘hallowed?’”) escaped every contestant.
It’s obvious: America has lost the art of memorization.
As recently as the 1970s, memorization was a standard part of American education. By the time you graduated high school, you’d have memorized the preamble to the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, a sizeable list of inspiring poems such as Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride” – and yes, The Lord’s Prayer.
A nation of people with no memorized wisdom in their heads is a lot less likely to be a great one. And it seems more than coincidental that Americans young and old today suffer from far more depression, mental instability, and idleness than when permanent memorization was a bigger part of our culture.
Correlation may not equal causation, but most people today feel a strong sense of loss – an inkling that we’re no longer on the right path, and a worry that our children may soon find themselves even more lost than we are if we don’t do some course-correcting.
One healthy way of addressing that nagging feeling is… learn the words of some of the great texts that your grandfather likely knew. Words that – unlike the ongoing experiment in memorylessness that led to that embarrassing Jeopardy! episode – have stood the test of time.
Here are five bits of literature to memorize with your sons.
1. The First Chapter of the Book of Proverbs (King James Version)
“To know wisdom and instruction,” go the first lines of this beautiful work,
to perceive the words of understanding;
To receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity;
To give subtlety to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion.
While unrhymed and not in verse, there is an unmistakable rhythm and elegance to the words. Find the full first chapter here and read it until it’s stuck in your head for good – in more than one sense!
By the way, here's a really easy way for a kid to memorize the first chapter of Proverbs: Listen and recite along with this recording of Alexander Scourby.
NOTE: If you’re raising a boy, things like the Scourby recordings are invaluable. Why? Because boys love to mimic, and Scourby has a very characterful and distinctive speaking style. That added texture, so to speak, makes the surface of the material easier to grip. I remember a group of male friends easily memorizing the entirety of T.S. Eliot's “The Wasteland.” I doubt they would've tackled the task so easily if it weren't for the fact that they used a cassette recording of Eliot's own (frankly bad, but extremely unique and fun to mimic) recitation of the poem.
2. "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley
This short poem is a handy reminder of the true (ridiculous) character of worldly ambition:
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 survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is 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.
3. “If” by Rudyard Kipling
This is an inspiring poem for everyone from the 10-year-old (who will find its marshall rhythm bracing and enjoyable) to the aging man reflecting on the sometimes seemingly thankless duties of fatherhood and grandfatherhood:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
BONUS: Check out this video of actor Michael Caine reciting the above poem.
4. “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden
A poem that captures something of the mixture of ruefulness and awe, the admiration and ingratitude a boy can sometimes feel toward a father. The imperfect man who models perfection. The boy who depends entirely on his father’s services – so doesn’t the boy, the innocent, deserve them?
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
5. Saint Crispin’s Day Speech (Henry V), William Shakespeare
A wonderful thing about this speech from Shakespeare’s play Henry V is that it’s unmistakably stirring and inspiring even out of context. Another wonderful thing about it, however, is that – like the passages above from the King James Bible – it piques the young reader’s interest and will send a boy in search of the missing context.
And that search can easily become lifelong because the “context” of the speech is not just Henry V but all of Shakespeare and all the world as he saw it. But not just the world as Shakespeare saw it but as he learned to see it from his own masters in the Christian faith, in politics, in science, and in literature.
Soon one discovers the thanklessness of the isolated chore (the impossibility of “getting” a great piece of literature or poetry). And that discovery leads to another: the inexhaustible rewards of the neverending quest – the reverent and diligent pursuit not of a finite collection of memorized passages, but of the excellences themselves of which those passages are written.
The speech:
King Henry V: What’s he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin:
If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
FINAL TIP:
Direct your child to read through the entirety of the Book of Psalms, then choose his favorite to memorize. If he's wiley and unstudious, he may simply choose the shortest. “Hah!” he might think: “Tricked you!”
Ah, but it's you who will have tricked him: He'll still have read through all the Psalms, and in fact fairly attentively (enough to calculate which is shortest). And he’s memorized one. What’s more, he’ll take pride in that accomplishment. In fact, it may be so gratifying to him that he won’t rest until he can repeat it. And so it’s on to the next great passage!
