Autumn vista

It was one of those moments where you have arrived at your destination but you remain in your car to finish listening to the radio. The show was "A Way w/ Words" which is one of my favs. Someone had called into the show and said his mother often referred to a disheveled person as "looking like the wreck of the Hesperus". He asked the hosts where it came from. I remember my mom often using the same phrase. The show hosts said it was a Longfellow poem about the floundering of a fictional ship. They said it was one of those poems that kids would often be required to memorize in school.  Made sense. Both of my parents would repeat poems they had learned way back when they went to school. Couldn't think of any poetry I'd been required to learn in school. I'd memorized Bible verses as a kid but that wasn't part of a school curriculum and once I graduated college I took it upon myself to learn some poems and book passages I liked. Maybe "Fahrenheit 451" had a bigger impact on my psyche than I thought.