When I was in elementary school in the late 1960s and early 1970s, our teachers routinely required us to read and memorize short verses and poems. Decades later, I can still recite some of them, despite the fact that I can't recall what I had for supper last night. The memorable assignments included nursery rhymes like There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe and simple poetry like Carl Sandburg's Fog, along with the classic, more lengthy tales that were assigned as I got older, such as The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and of course, Paul Revere's Ride, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

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