What is the oldest poem you can recite from memory?

Answer 1

The Middle English prologue to the Canterbury Tales by Chaucer.

It was a class project in my 7th grade and I still rattle it off a couple times a year just for fun.

here is the text

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(So priketh hem Nature 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.

Answer 2

It's called "The Nonsense Poem" and am unsure of the author, but here goes:

Dear laduls and jellyspoons,
I come before you, to stand behind you,
To tell you something I know nothing about;
This Thursday, the day after Friday,
There's a ladies meeting for men only.
Wear your best clothes if you haven't any, and if you can come
please don't.
Admission is free, please pay at the door,
Pull up a chair, and sit on the floor,
And I'll tell you a story I've never heard before.
One bright day in the middle of the night,
Two dead boys rose up to fight;
Back to back they faced each other, drew their
swords and shot the other,
A deaf policeman heard the noise, and came to
kill those two dead boys;
If you don't believe the story's true,
Go ask the blind man, he saw it too.

That's it......and for all those PC fanatics out there....it's just a poem.

Answer 3

Ich am of Irlonde,
ant of the holy lande
of Irlonde.
Gode sire, pray ich the,
for of saynte charite
come ant dance wyth me
in Irlonde.

Or if you don't restrict yourself to English (which might well cut out the late Middle English above, too):

Tantum ergo sacramentum
Veneremur cernui:
Et antiquum documentum
Novo cedat ritui:
Praestet fides supplementum
Sensuum defectui.

Genitori, genitoque
Laus et jubilatio,
Salus, honor virtus quoque
Sit et benedictio:
Procedenti ab utroque
Compar sit laudatio.

Thomas Aquinas, mid-13th-c.

Or in actual Modern English (which cuts out Shakespeare), a big jump to Alfred Noyes' "The Highwayman." But if something a lot shorter is earlier, I may not be thinking of it . . .

Answer 4

Undersea by Marchette Chute

Beneath the waters, green and cool
the mermaids keep a swimming school.

The oysters trot;the lobsters prance;
the dolphins come to join the dance.

But the jellyfish who are rather small
can't seem to learn the steps at all.


It was the first poem I ever memorized and I memorized in the third grade.

Answer 5

El Dorado by Edgar Allen Poe

Answer 6

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow,
between the crosses row on row.
That mark our place
and in the sky
the birds still bravely singing fly
scarce heard amidst the guns below

Answer 7

"A Simple Recipe"
James Whitcomb Riley

To be a wholly worthy man, As you, my boy, would like to be, -
This is to show you how you can - This simple recipe: -
Be honest, both in word and act, Be strictly truthful through and through -
Fact cannot fail. You stick to fact, and fact will stick to you.
Be clean, outside and in, and sweep both hearth and heart and hold them bright -
Wear snowy linen - aye, and keep your conscience snowy white -
Do right, your utmost - good must come
To you who do your level best -
Your very hopes will help you some,
And work will do the rest.

I am not sure when Riley wrote this, but I love it and recite it to my young son often. It makes him giggle.

Answer 8

John Donne - 500 years old. The "Batter My Heart" sonnet from The Holy Sonnets. I love it. Donne's poetry is so beautifully erotic and sensual. Hard to believe it was written 500 years ago. Pax - C

Answer 9

As I was walking all alane,
I heard twa corbies making a mane;
The tane unto t'other say,
"Where shall we gang and dine today?"

"In behint yon auld dail dike,
I wot there lies a new slain knight;
And naebody kens that he lies there,
But his hawk, his hound, and lady fair.

"His hound is to the hunting gane,
His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame,
His lady's ta'en another mate,
So we may mak our dinner sweet.

"Ye'll sit on his white hause-bane,
And I'll pike out his bonny blue een;
Wi' ae lock o' his gowden hair
We'll theek our nest when it grows bare.

"Many a one for him makes mane,
But nane sall ken where he is gane;
O'er his white banes, when they are bare,
The wind sall blaw for evermair."

I could only remember the first verse. Don't know why. Goes back to my high school, but I looked up the rest. It was a 16th century poem. Anonymous. By oldest, you meant earliest written, right? Or did I mess up?

Answer 10

I am NOT going to recite it now, because it is long, but Paul Revere's Ride by Wadsworth Longfellow.