Poetry and Prose for Memorization and Reading Aloud Fall 2001

Examples from the above pages:

I loved you...

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin

Russian (1799-1837)

Translated by Genia Gurarie, 11/10/95

I loved you, and I probably still do,

And for a while the feeling may remain...

But let my love no longer trouble you,

I do not wish to cause you any pain.

I loved you; and the hopelessness I knew,

The jealousy, the shyness – though in vain –

Made up a love so tender and so true

As may God grant you to be loved again.

To a Friend

Amy Lowell American (1874-1925)

I ask but one thing of you, only one,
That always you will be my dream of you;
That never shall I wake to find untrue
All this I have believed and rested on,
Forever vanished, like a vision gone
Out into the night. Alas, how few
There are who strike in us a chord we knew
Existed, but so seldom heard its tone
We tremble at the half-forgotten sound.
The world is full of rude awakenings
And heaven-born castles shattered to the ground,
Yet still our human longing vainly clings
To a belief in beauty through all wrongs.
O stay your hand, and leave my heart its songs!

Interior

Dorothy Parker American (1893-1967)

Her mind lives in a quiet room,

A narrow room, and tall,

With pretty lamps to quench the gloom

And mottoes on the wall.

There all the things are waxen neat

And set in decorous lines;

And there are posies, round and sweet,

And little, straightened vines.

Her mind lives tidily, apart

From cold and noise and pain,

And bolts the door against her heart,

Out wailing in the rain.