What are your favourite lines of poetry?
One of the reasons I love poetry is that I can come across a phrase or a line that just grabs me, resonates, touches my soul even.
One of my all-time favourite poems is Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, which has several examples of such lines. As a long-time teacher/adult educator my favourites are where he wants us to realise that we are all capable of greatness; it is simply the circumstances of our birth that make the difference:

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

And, later

Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.

Anyone have favourite lines, and how do they affect you?

'Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.' Robert Frost

What an extraordinary thing it is to be alive and choosing

'Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim....' Gerard Manley Hopkins

The whole of 'Pied Beauty' brings home the utterly amazing beauty and diversity of nature, which is a window on the mind of the Creator.

My favourite lines are not from a poem but a Dylan song called To Ramona:
Your cracked country lips
I still wish to kiss
as to be by the strength of your skin,
your magnetic movements still capture the minutes I'm in.

Anybody tells me that songs can't be poems I point them at that.

Yes, those lines of Frost's are superb and a favourite of mine, too. But it is the line: "...and that has made all the difference" that intrigues; how can he know, given that he did not choose the other route? Sliding doors stuff.

I'm right with you on Robert Frost. Perhaps it's a bit of a cliche, but my favourite lines of his are the last stanza of "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.":

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/stopping-by-woods-on-a-snowy-evening-2/

"The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep."

I think they work for me due to their enigmatic quality when taken in the context of the rest of the poem. the Rhyme structure is:

AABA
BBCB
CCDC
DDDD

almost as if the rest of the poem is building up to this last phrase.I find it enigmatic in that the last lines suggest hurry and committments, and yet he has time to stop and peer into dark, deep woods. Just what is it that's on his mind? Maybe the dark,deep woods are a metaphor?

I like this thread Julian - it will be interesting to hear everyone's choices.

Regards,
A.E.

These lines from Milton - 'Paradise Lost' - book vi made a lot of sense to me some while ago yet still ring true on occasion.

O sun! to tell thee how i hate thy beams,
That bring to my remembrance from what state
I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere;
Till pride and worse ambition threw me down,
Warring in heaven against heaven's matchless king. :-)

None saw their spirits' shadow shake the grass,

Or stood aside for the half used life to pass

Out of those doomed nostrils and the doomed mouth,

When the swift iron burning bee

Drained the wild honey of their youth


Isaac Rosenberg.

Anthony, I couldn't agree more. For me it was toss-up between those two of Frost's, but I was trying to observe a limit - delighted to see it here. "My little horse must think it queer...." Wonderful.

Interesting to see Milton make an appearance. How is this going to develop? Fascinating

" I do not dangle at the dawning on a strand of sunlight,nor do I perch on paragraphs of prayers. I'm a hill and gully rider only on the edge of conversations, never in the centre.

Rod McKuen The Leaving
It was hard to chose just one verse as the whole poem is brilliant.

As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk, the Law runneth forward and back -
For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.
Kipling
(also the motto of the New Zealand All-Blacks)

I suppose some of my all-time favourites, come to think of it a little more are from Blake's Auguries of Innocence:

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

Oddly, I don't like the rest of the poem.

I am particularly keen on snatches of poems, as they often do enough for me, some being better without the rest of the poem, as if the rest were over-written somehow, as in the Blake lines. My mother was often quoting lines from classic poems - Palgrave's Golden Treasury et al - but could never remember the whole of any poem.

"In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo"
but I don't know WHY those lines stay in my head! I guess because they are so enigmatic. I also always remember from the James Joyce book Potrait of the Artist "Oh the grey dull day!" But again, I don't have the faintest idea why.

Wilfred Owen

Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.

Christina Rossetti

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain;
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.

Phillip Larkin

Do memories plague their ears like flies?
They shake their heads. Dusk brims the shadows.
Summer by summer all stole away,
The starting-gates, the crowd and cries -
All but the unmolesting meadows.

Louis MacNeice

I am not yet born, console me.
I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,
with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.

I am not yet born; provide me
With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk
to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light
in the back of my mind to guide me.

John Betjeman

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!

Walt Whitman

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full
hands;
How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it
is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful
green stuff woven.

------

I would have included the lines from Blake- pure genius! But Julian beat me too it.

One more magical one from Blake then;

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?

So much more....great thread :)

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

In a station of the Metro
By Ezra Pound

So intriguing

May I be so bold as to add another?

From Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias":

http://www.poetry-online.org/shelley_ozymandias.htm

'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

A beatiful way of reminding us of our relative insignificance.

Regards,
A.E.

And, in a lighter but nonetheless relevant vein; from Wendy Cope's "After the lunch":

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-1022230/Love--Poems-straight-heart-Wendy-Cope.html

On Waterloo Bridge, where we said our goodbyes,
The weather conditions bring tears to my eyes.
I wipe them away with a black woolly glove
And try not to notice I’ve fallen in love.

Haven't we all been there?

Regards,
A.E.

Hmm, yes, Anthony, though never on Waterloo Bridge.
Eliot's J. Alfred Prufrock, Ann, has even more such enigmatic lines in my view, though I think the ones you quote are the only ones repeated?
My grandmother's favourite poem, The Rhubayat of Omar Kayham contains some of my favourites, too:
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop't we live and die,
Lift not thy hands to It for help - for It
Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.

The Rubaiyat!!!

Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
About it and about; but evermore
Came out by the same Door as in I went.

I think mayhap you have found a motto for the dicussion threads there Dave!

Regards,
A.E.

Like most of us, my list is endless. But I was struck recently by May Sarton's 'A Letter to James Stephens'

In excerpts:

'Your job is to draw out the essence and provide
The word that will endure, comfort, sustain a man.
...
Dear James, pure poet, I see you with that shell
Held to your sensitive abstracted ear,
Hunting the ocean's rumour till you hear it well,
Until you can set down the sound you hear.'

Interesting that most of our favourites are in formal metric feet and rhyme.

Yes, it is interesting. and your suggestion as to why Cynthia?

I love Roger Mcgough's stuff, none more than his:

You and I

I explain quietly. You
hear me shouting. You
try a new tack. I
feel old wounds reopen.

You see both sides. I
see your blinkers. I
am placatory. You
sense a new selfishness.

I am a dove. You
recognize the hawk. You
offer an olive branch. I
feel the thorns.

You bleed. I
see crocodile tears. I
withdraw. You
reel from the impact.

sums up that awful situaion when communication has nothing to do with the words, but in the trust, now lost. And, what do you make of the line breaks?

I like the line breaks in that, Julian - it works because the reader is clearly stressing the You's and I's.

James Tate - Lewis and Clarke Overheard in Conversation

then we’ll get us some wine and spare ribs

I think Mcgough's poem requires recitation in full drama mode. I find the line breaks are a strict, strong 1 2/1 2/1 2/1 2 stress, with an introductory line of 1 2 3 in some stanzas such as : 'You bleed I'. The longer lines have intervening syllables which are subordinated to the power of the 'I's' and 'You's'. IMO, any other line breaks would lessen the idea-power of 'bashing your head against a stone wall', or of smashing a tennis ball back and forth over a tight net, aggressively.

That Whitsun I was late getting away,not till about one-twenty on the sunlit Saturday did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,all windows down,all cushions hot,all sense of being in a hurry gone.I love the Whitsun Weddings,and most others by Larkin,esp these next lines.A dozen marriages got under wayThey watched the landscape,sitting side by side, an odeon went past,a cooling tower,and someone running up to bowl-and none thought of the others they would never meet,or how their lives would all contain this hour.To me,Larkin conveys common thoughts really well,in a language that's understandable,and I feel drawn completely into his world when I read his stuff.I also love his "Days" poem;
Where can we live but days?ah,solving that question brings the priest and the doctor in their long coats running over the fields.The themes of life,health(the doctor),and spirituality (the priest) hit home really well in a brilliantly short piece.These are just two poems that have made a big impact on my life.

I am reading Letters to Monica at the moment, Larkin's correspondence with his long-time, long-suffering "love interest". It seems hard to equate the sensitivity that could produce Whitsun Weddings with the mastery of misanthropy himself. he was such a curmudgeon, and so mean to Monica.I have to read the book in short bursts t avoid getting over-depressed by it; rather like Fukishima workers having to spend only short periods of time in the danger zone to avoid contamination.
His This Be the Verse, is so well-known because the lines resonate with us all:
They fuck you up your mum and dad
they may not mean to but they do
they fill you with the faults they had
and add some extra, just for you
And they were fucked-up in their turn
by fools in old-style hats and coats
who half the time were soppy stern and half at one another's throats
man hands on misery to man
it deepens like a coastal shelf
so get out as quickly as yoy can
and don't have any kids yourself

..."In the fury of the moment I can see The Master's hand,
In every leaf that trembles, in Every Grain of Sand".

..."Then onward on my journey I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like Every Grain of Sand".

..."I am hanging in the balance of the reality of Man
Like every sparrow falling, like Every Grain of Sand".

John, I don't know this: who? what?

A hymn by Bob Dylan called "Every Grain of Sand". It's on Shot of Love album.

Yeats:"Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,Enwrought with golden and silver light,The blue and the dim and the dark clothsOf night and light and the half light,I would spread the cloths under your feet:But I, being poor, have only my dreams;I have spread my dreams under your feet;Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."

I always found those lines beautiful Freda :)

I also loved Macneice's reference to Sunlight on the garden...

We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold

And if thinking of language in the context of strength in beauty, I find it hard to overlook Wordsworth.

Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass,
of glory in the flower,
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind

You know what, much as I love poetry, some of my favourite lines are from novels and songs...

How about this from the novel The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson ...

"Her smile was like a kiss on all my worst secrets" ... I must admit I borrowed that line and used it as inspiration for a new poem of mine about lost love.

Now I need to replace it with an original line of my own. Still working on that.

And how about this from a Roddy Frame song ... "If the prophets knocked my door with all that Heaven held in store, I'd probably ask to see a sample".

A Lemon

Out of lemon flowers
loosed
on the moonlight, love's
lashed and insatiable
essences,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree's yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree's planetarium

Delicate merchandise!
The harbors are big with it-
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.

Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.

So, while the hand
holds the cut of the lemon,
half a world
on a trencher,
the gold of the universe
wells
to your touch:
a cup yellow
with miracles,
a breast and a nipple
perfuming the earth;
a flashing made fruitage,
the diminutive fire of a planet.

Pablo Neruda

fantastic poet!!

and

The Dug Out

Why do you lie with your legs ungainly huddled,
And one arm bent across your sullen, cold,
Exhausted face? It hurts my heart to watch you,
Deep-shadowed from the candle's guttering gold;
And you wonder why I shake you by the shoulder;
Drowsy, you mumble and sigh and turn your head...
You are too young to fall asleep for ever;
And when you sleep you remind me of the dead.
Siegfried Sassoon

that poem has haunted me since the first time I read it about 15 years ago and caused me to fall in love with his soul.

A Dream within a Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but 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?


I posted the whole thing as I couldn't really decide on a favourite line - this was the first poem I liked without being forced to. You study poetry at school and spend hours writing about a few lines of text! I bought a collection of American poetry in preparation for a university interview in 1984, this one, by Edgar Allen Poe stood out.

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows;
What are those blue-remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

This appeals to the melancholy that
lingers on through much of our national character - and never fails
to find a response in that nameless
hunger for a world gone by and lost
forever. The proof that more isn't
necessarily better.

Julian - regarding your reference to Gray's Elegy, I believe it was
General Wolfe, victor at Quebec, who
said he'd rather have written than poem than anything he himself had achieved.

The train at Pershore station was waiting that Sunday night
Gas light on the platform, in my carriage electric light,
Gas light on frosty evergreens, electric on Empire wood,
The Victorian world and the present in a moment's neighbourhood.
There was no one about but a conscript who was saying good-bye to his love
On the windy weedy platform with the sprinkled stars above
When sudden the waiting stillness shook with the ancient spells
Of an older world than all our worlds in the sound of the Pershore bells.
They were ringing them down for Evensong in the lighted abbey near,
Sounds which had poured through apple boughs for seven centuries here.

With Guilt, Remorse, Eternity the void within me fills
And I thought of her left behind me in the Herefordshire hills.
I remembered her defencelessness as I made my heart a stone
Till she wove her self-protection round and left me on my own.
And plunged in a deep self pity I dreamed of another wife
And lusted for freckled faces and lived a separate life.
One word would have made her love me, one word would have made her turn
But the word I never murmured and now I am left to burn.
Evesham, Oxford and London. The carriage is new and smart.
I am cushioned and soft and heated with a deadweight in my heart.

J.C. - haunting imagery conjuring
up "G.K. Chesterton meets Betjeman" for me.

Indeed it was Betjeman, MC. Entitled "Pershore Station".
I love the idea of a moment having "neighbourhood" and the sound of church bells pouring through apple boughs.
That and the just-beneath-the-surface dactylic beat.