October Memorization

At the conclusion of Fahrenheit 451, Montag is invited to join Granger and the other “hoboes” in memorizing books as a way of preserving their important contents until the rest of society is ready to once again accept them. For your October memorization, select a poem or passage from something that you would like to commit to memory. The source can be anything that is appropriate for school and conforms to your family’s standards. Be sure that what you choose to memorize is not something you already know.  Following is an excerpt from Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach,” the poem that Montag recites to Millie and her friends, which you may use if you can’t come up with anything on your own. This poem is sixty-eight words long, so your choice should also be about sixty-eight words.

from Dover Beach
–Matthew Arnold

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.