[HIP StoryFest 2022] Poetry Recitation samples

Primary — Friendship

Dear Friend
By William Shakespeare

When to the session of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.
 [HIP StoryFest 2022] Poetry Recitation samples

Lower Secondary — Responsibility

If—
By Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream, and not make dreams your master;

If you can think, and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with kings, nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And, which is more, you’ll be a Man, my son!
 [HIP StoryFest 2022] Poetry Recitation samples

Upper Secondary — Dreams / Aspirations

A Dream
By William Cullen Bryant

I had a dream—a strange, wild dream—

Said a dear voice at early light;
And even yet its shadows seem
To linger in my waking sight.

Earth, green with spring, and fresh with dew,

And bright with morn, before me stood;
And airs just wakened softly blew
On the young blossoms of the wood.

Birds sang within the sprouting shade,

Bees hummed amid the whispering grass,
And children prattled as they played
Beside the rivulet’s dimpling glass

Fast climbed the sun: the flowers were flown,

There played no children in the glen;
For some were gone, and some were grown
To blooming dames and bearded men.

‘Twas noon, ’twas summer: I beheld

Woods darkening in the flush of day,
And that bright rivulet spread and swelled,
A mighty stream, with creek and bay.

And here was love, and there was strife,

And mirthful shouts, and wrathful cries,
And strong men, struggling as for life,
With knotted limbs and angry eyes.

Now stooped the sun—the shades grew thin;

The rustling paths were piled with leaves;
And sunburnt groups were gathering in,
From the shorn field, its fruits and sheaves.
 [HIP StoryFest 2022] Poetry Recitation samples

The river heaved with sullen sounds;

The chilly wind was sad with moans;
Black hearses passed, and burial-grounds
Grew thick with monumental stones.

Still waned the day; the wind that chased

The jagged clouds blew chillier yet;
The woods were stripped, the fields were waste,
The wintry sun was near its set.

And of the young, and strong, and fair,

A lonely remnant, gray and weak,
Lingered, and shivered to the air
Of that bleak shore and water bleak.

Ah! age is drear, and death is cold!

I turned to thee, for thou wert near,
And saw thee withered, bowed, and old,
And woke all faint with sudden fear.

‘Twas thus I heard the dreamer say,

And bade her clear her clouded brow;
“For thou and I, since childhood’s day,
Have walked in such a dream till now.

“Watch we in calmness, as they rise,

The changes of that rapid dream,
And note its lessons, till our eyes
Shall open in the morning beam.”