Favorite lines of poetry

[Scrybe]

I saw Death hiding beneath the kitchen sink,

"I'm not real!" it cried,

"Just a rumour spread by life..."

 

Gregory Corso

 

 

 

[abelkoh8]

Me being me, I adore my own poetry :

 

This one is titled: ON QUEEN'S ORDERS

 

1066, Waterloo

1918, World War 2

Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori: They said

 

Now it has come to me

Will I for Queen and Country?

I took the

Oath

 

A burden, I carry

A curse

 

I had rather wished not to be here

On this battle ground

not against the armies of men

but against the words which i pen

 

The warrant which I send

shall cause a thousand to fall

But far from me

 

I have no peace

no rest.

My words on the printed paper

haunt me

The words which i pen

the poetry of death.

 

* note : dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori- (Latin) - it is good and honorable for one to die for his country.

 

i guessed that this was the most appropriate for this forum. :roflmho:

[Beechwood]

A poem from a mother to her adopted child.

 

Not flesh of my flesh,

Nor bone of my bone,

But still, totally,

My Own.

 

Never forget,

For one single minute,

That you didn't grow under my heart,

But in it.

[Flourish and Blotts]

This thread could use a little more Byron:

 

 

ahem...

 

 

 

Fain would I fly the haunts of men--

I seek to shun not hate mankind;

My breast requires the sullen glen,

Whose gloom may suit a darkened mind.

Oh! that to me the wings were given,

Which bear the turtle to her nest!

Then would I cleave the vault of heaven,

To flee away, and be at rest.

 

 

--I Would I Were A Careless Child

Edited December 21, 2008 by Flourish and Blotts

[katim]

They shall grow not old

As we that are left grow old;

Age shall not weary them,

Nor the years condemn:

At the going down of the sun

And in the morning,

We will remember them.

 

Laurence Binyon

 

Much quoted at Remembrance Day services, but nonetheless poignant for their frequent repetition.

[vidalia11]

More Poe - From "A Dream Within a Dream"

 

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand --

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep -- while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

[Slush99]

i really like this poem by Yeats, I think... I forgot it though. Just remember that i liked it a lot.

[runnjump]

The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard

And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,

Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.

[Abhik]

Let us go out then

You & I,

When the evening is spread out

against the sky

like a person etharised upon a table.

[wandrson]

WHEN lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,

And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,

I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

 

Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,

Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,

And thought of him I love.

[lightweaver]

Always loved these four lines of Frost's

 

 

They cannot look out far.

They cannot look in deep.

But when was that ever a bar

To any watch they keep?

 

(Neither Out Far Nor In Deep)

[HyacinthLo]

Let us go out then

You & I,

When the evening is spread out

against the sky

like a person etharised upon a table.

 

this to is one of my favorite lines!

by T.S. Eliot

 

What is this death? A quiet of the heart?

The whole of that of which we are a part?

by. Lord Byron

 

I must admit I am not as knowledgeable in poems and poets and I would like to be, I'm hoping to change that with my time off.

 

[callida]

This is not from a poem, but it aches like one:

 

 

We drank a little longer and then we went to bed, but it wasn't the same, it never is ? there was space between us, things had happened. I watched her walk to the bathroom, saw the wrinkles and folds under the cheeks of her ass. Poor thing. Poor poor thing. Joyce had been firm and hard ? you grabbed a handful and it felt good. Betty didn't feel so good. It was sad, it was sad, it was sad. When Betty came back we didn't sing or laugh, or even argue. We sat drinking in the dark, smoking cigarettes, and when we went to sleep, I didn't put my feet on her body or she on mine like we used to. We slept without touching.

 

We had both been robbed.

 

 

--Charles Bukowski, Post Office

 

 

 

Santa Rosa, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1971; p 96.

 

Makes me think of this:

 

TALKING IN BED

 

Talking in bed ought to be easiest,

Lying together there goes back so far,

An emblem of two people being honest.

 

Yet more and more time passes silently.

Outside, the wind's complete unrest

Builds and disperses clouds about the sky,

 

And dark towns heap up on the horizon.

None of this cares for us. Nothing shows why

At this unique distance from isolation

 

It becomes still more difficult to find

Words at once true and kind,

Or not untrue and not unkind.

 

...

 

I love a lot of Philip Larkin's poetry. Also some of Ted Hughes' - so earthy and physical.

 

How is it that I haven't seen this thread before?

 

Oh, and this, for its deceptive simplicity:

 

Even in Kyoto

...

I long for Kyoto

[HyacinthLo]

My father wrote this poem to me in a letter when I was going through a hard time.

 

Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless in facing them.

Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain but for the heart to conquer it.

Let me not look for allies in life's battlefield but to my own strength.

Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved but hope for the patience to win my freedom.

Grant me that I may not be a coward, feeling your mercy in my success alone;

but let me find the grasp of your hand in my failure.

 

Fruit-gathering by Rabindranath Tagore

[Flourish and Blotts]

What is this death? A quiet of the heart?

The whole of that of which we are a part?

by. Lord Byron

 

 

I was hoping you could tell me what poem this is from.

 

Thanks.

[Desfeuilles]

One of my favorite verses:

 

Supple and turbulent, a ring of men

Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn

Their boisterous devotion to the sun,

Not as a god, but as a god might be,

Naked among them, like a savage source.

Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,

Out of their blood, returning to the sky;

And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,

The windy lake wherein their lord delights,

The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,

That choir among themselves long afterward.

They shall know well the heavenly fellowship

Of men that perish and of summer morn.

And whence they came and whither they shall go

The dew upon their feet shall manifest.

 

A complete poem:

 

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

 

Under my window, a clean rasping sound

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:

My father, digging. I look down

 

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds

Bends low, comes up twenty years away

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills

Where he was digging.

 

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

 

By God, the old man could handle a spade.

Just like his old man.

 

My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner's bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf. Digging.

 

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I've no spade to follow men like them.

 

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I'll dig with it.

 

 

 

 

 

[HyacinthLo]

What is this death? A quiet of the heart?

The whole of that of which we are a part?

by. Lord Byron

 

 

I was hoping you could tell me what poem this is from.

 

Thanks.

 

Excerpt from A Fragment

To poem

 

[lmederos]

Although Coleridge is not my favorite, the opening lines of "Kubla Khan" are some of my favorites

 

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

 

 

 

[Flourish and Blotts]

Although Coleridge is not my favorite, the opening lines of "Kubla Khan" are some of my favorites

 

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

 

It starts off great...

 

...the problem is the rest of the poem.

 

[lmederos]

Although Coleridge is not my favorite, the opening lines of "Kubla Khan" are some of my favorites

 

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

 

It starts off great...

 

...the problem is the rest of the poem.

 

That is why I like **the opening lines** !!

 

I guess the rest only makes sense when in an opium-induced dream, as allegedly Coleridge was at the time.

 

... then there is the Ancient Mariner but that is for another day !!

Edited February 6, 2009 by lmederos