Remember Meryl Streep Reading A. E. Housman?

Denys Finch-Hatton's glory hasn't faded entirely since he became "Townsman of a stiller town." ("To an Athlete Dying Young")

I have read that his grave in the Ngong Hills overlooking the Rift Valley is well-visited.  Athlete at Oxford, safari pilot to royalty, lover of literature, and lover of two women authors whose own glories have not faded, he, in his elevated grave, holds up "The still defended challenge cup."
  
Out of Africa is one of my favorite films.  If you haven't seen it, put it at the top of your list.  It's a film every lit student should see.  Imagine Denys and Karen (Robert Redford and Meryl Streep in 1985) camping in the African bush, where he washes her hair while reciting poetry to her.  Sudsing and cooing, he's every gal's hero, but Karen is the one who gets to play the Hemingway part as she "shoo"s away lions.  The film, as well as the book, is an autobiographical account of Danish author Karen Blixen (pen name Isak Dinesen) and Finch-Hatton and their lives in colonial Kenya, replete with historic European aristocracy.  It's a story of many famous lives well-lived.

You can view eiher the full film or a short clip of Meryl Streep reading A. E. Housman's poem  at You Tube, but note that Meryl's reading omits several stanzas.  Type in the title of the poem, and you will discover that a huge percentage of the English-speaking world likes to film themselves reading "To an Athlete Dying Young."  If you have little time or patience for "dead air," better to read it to yourself.
 
Better yet, find a copy of A Shropshire Lad, probably the most treasured book of poetry in English, and keep it forever.  In spring, you may see a cherry tree in bloom, and you'll want to quote "Loveliest of Trees."  When you are burned in love, you may want to recite "When I was one-and-twenty."  The book offers many similar opportunities.

Housman's theme of a life well-lived--I like to think of it that way--is displayed on Finch-Hatton's grave by a plaque inscribed with an excerpt from Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: 
"He prayeth well who loveth well/ Both man and bird and beast."
This theme urging us to live life to the fullest abounds in literature and poetry--and decorates many tombstones and public statuary.
 
After visiting Paris, I regretted most not searching Pere Lachaise Cemetery for quoted bits of wisdom, but I did wander into Montmartre Cemetery when I spied from a distance someone I recognized:

"If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you:  I am here to live out loud."'

Emile Zola in Nana

Because I didn't photograph any inscription, I'm not sure this caption is actually on this original grave of Emile Zola, now in the Pantheon, but the novelist's most famous line defines his life.  "Living out loud" is Zola's quotable phrase for living life to the fullest.  It reminds us of his defence of Dreyfuss  ("J'accuse . . ."), his consequent expatriot sojourn in England, and his exposure of the coal industry in Germinal.  Although his works are prose, his tone and themes are poetic.
 
Dylan Thomas' poem "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" may be difficult to remember in its entirety, but the last two lines are easy to commit.  Here, he echoes Zola's "out loud" in his prescription for us (especially for his father) even in old age:  "Do not go gentle into that good night./  Rage, rage against the dying of the light."  How different are these lines from the one Keats requested on his tombstone in Rome:  "Here lies One Whose name was writ in Water."  Was he beaten by his disease or raging over the bitter irony of dying at age 26 with so much potential untapped?

On the lighter side, I discovered in Rouen the home of French poet Pierre Corneille.

Birthplace in 1606 in Rouen of Pierre Corneille, author of Le Cid

His comment encourages us to live right and to live long:  "How sweet to die after one's enemies."  A character in his The Death of Pompey, a verse drama, exclaims, "Rome, if you do not wish me to betray you, make enemies that I can hate!"
 
Similarly, Robert Frost ". . . had a lover's quarrel with the world" ("A Lesson for Today" and tombstone) as he trod "the one less traveled by."  ("The Road Not Taken")  To paraphrase, "living out loud" includes rebellion, a healthy irreverence for the status quo, not conforming when the multitude is wrong.

With perhaps more gusto at heart, Shelley longs "to quicken a new birth" in "Ode to the West Wind," a poem whose Canto V is suitable for memorizing even if the entire work is a tad long.  In some lines, Shelley bemoans his own weakness and resembles Matthew Arnold's epithet for him:  "an ineffectual angel." ("Shelley: A brief account of his life and work," digital reprint of 1st ed., 1888)  But in his "Defense of Poetry," Shelley proclaims poets "the hidden legislators of the world."  That is what he wants the west wind to make of him:  "impetuous one."

With that image of the poet, we can return to Denys Finch-Hatton.  Flying his Gypsy Moth into the African bush country, scoffing at his aristocratic title, and refusing to marry, he lives out loud, flies the "road not taken," and "loveth well."  He may not write poetry, but he lives it and can quote it--just like you!