Memorization has played a part in the composition and transmission of British literary texts. This talk will consider the embodied rhythms of poetry from Beowulf (eighth century) to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (fourteenth century), then on to Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1590s), and poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley two hundred years ago. With reference to current work in music and cognitive science, including the timing neurons in the brain, one question will be: can a memorized poem, recited in time, affect the body as it moves in space—as in walking along a footpath, or running? Tom Cable is the Jane Weinert Blumberg Chair Emeritus in English and a founding member of British Studies. He has published books and articles on the rhythms of English poetry from their origins to the present. Since 1978 he has been coauthor of A History of the English Language, now in its sixth edition.