Several readers, you old flatterers you, comment that they have often admired my memory for poetry.

Please don’t. It’s true I remember every line of verse I read up to about age 18, including the proem of The Aeneid & a fair bit of basic Horace (“Eheu fugaces…,” “Vixi puellis…” and a few more).

After that it gets blurry real fast.

So get some poetry into your kids’ heads while it can stick, before Derbheimers sets in.

I can still remember all the words to the first song I ever learned, around age 4. It was this one.

And, as Corner visitors know well, I do indeed try to be a sunbeam to all who visit us.