Mystery of Poetry in the Bucket

AM I A POET?

"Nobody can advise and help you, nobody. There is only one single means. Go inside yourself. Discover the motive that bids you write; examine whether it sends its roots down to the deepest places of your heart, confess to yourself whether you would have to die if writing were denied you. This before all: ask yourself in the quietest hour of your night: must I write?" – Rainer Maria Rilke

HOW AM I A POET?

My first memory of poetry besides the nursery rhymes that my mother read to me and I recited back to her is my love for the poem THE HIGHWAYMAN. 
She read it to me once and after that I asked for it every night. I started to memorize the melodic opening lines and I would sit with the book on our couch and recite it to the book and believed that I was reading it.
 I did this several times a day and was relentless in it . When my mother saw and heard, she sat with me and just pointed to each word as I recited it and after many tries I suddenly got the connection and I was reading it.
 And I believe that I taught myself to read because I so loved the poem and wanted to read it any time that I wanted and not need to wait for someone to read it to me.

Listen to the wonderful cadences

The Highwayman

BY ALFRED NOYES

PART ONE

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.   

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.   

The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,   

And the highwayman came riding—

         Riding—riding—

The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

Re-read it and see how it  feels in your mouth and in your mind

I loved the word pictures and when I looked at a moon in a cloudy sky, I said the line from the poem.

Since I knew it by heart it became a kind of party piece—I could recite it to friends and amaze them.

Also I loved the sad romance of the lovely Bess who dies to warn her lover of the waiting Redcoats.

My second favorite romantic poem was the tale of Fair Ellen and the gallant Lochinvar.

 Here is the text  first two verses of that poem which I also memorized and would recite often at the request of my Uncle Joe.

Lochinvar

BY SIR WALTER SCOTT

O young Lochinvar is come out of the west,

Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;

And save his good broadsword he weapons had none,

He rode all unarm’d, and he rode all alone.

So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,

There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.

He staid not for brake, and he stopp’d not for stone,

He swam the Eske river where ford there was none;

But ere he alighted at Netherby gate,

The bride had consented, the gallant came late:

For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war,

Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar.

There was another  brief poem by Wordsworth that my mother often chose to read in those Poetry Saturday  nights when all baths were over, my sisters were  sleeping soundly and Anna was out dancing

She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

She dwelt among the untrodden ways

Beside the springs of Dove,

A Maid whom there were none to praise

And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone

Half hidden from the eye!

—Fair as a star, when only one

Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know

When Lucy ceased to be;

But she is in her grave, and, oh,

The difference to me!

THE WAY HE ENDS THAT  NEXT TO LAST LINE WITH THE-- oh--
 ANGUISHED OUTPOURING OF HIS OWN HEART.

AT LAST THE SPEAKER OWNS HIS HIDDEN BELOVED AND HIS  PERHAPS HIDDEN LOVE.