You're just jealous that the voices only talk to me.

I have all this poetry running through my head this morning.

That's sort of an unusual situation for me, as--unless you count song lyrics--I'm not one for remembering poetry.

But maybe it's because I'm trying so hard to memorize the Lord's Prayer in Old English that my brain is just going around remembering everything. (By the way, I'm getting pretty good at the Lord's Prayer in Old English, I think. I can do all of it, to some degree, except part of the last line. Which isn't bad for someone who only know a line and a half yesterday.)

Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum;
Sid þin nama gehalgod
to becume þin rice
geweorþe ðin willa
on eorðan swa swa on heofonum.
urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us to dæg
ond forgyfað us ure gyltas
swa swa we forgyfað urum gyltendum
ond ne gelæd þu us on costnunge
ac alys us of yfele soþlice

Other than that, I blame the Gothic Gala last night; a bunch of English majors and English professors (and a few other people, I suppose) read and listened to Halloween-ish things ranging from Macbeth to Something Wicked This Way Comes. Sam, the chancellor, read "The Cremation of Sam McGee," a poem I have liked ever since my tenth-grade English teacher read it to our class. Hearing him read it now, I was surprised to realize I actually remember parts of it. Especially the beginning (and, well, it's the end, too):

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

(Sam also pointed out to us that this poem makes the best use of anapestic tetrameter.)

Another poem was read, described only as "a poem about cannibalism," by an English professor who's known to be good at reading stuff out loud. THis time he sounded kind of like a pirate. And since he asked us to help him recite the repeated chorus, I remember that, too.

Oh, I am the cook, and the captain bold,
And the mate of the Nancy's brig,
And the bosun tight, and the midshipmite,
And the crew of the captain's gig.

(Of course, the speaker is all of those people because he ate them all, after there was a shipwreck and everybody else had died except those ten and they didn't have any food.)

So, in other words, my head is an interesting place to be this morning, what with all of these things mixed together.