Favorite lines of poetry

[jmkeuning]

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you.

[liapuyat]

I am not sure if I remember it correctly, but this was written by Stephen Spender in the early days of WWII:

 

History has tongues

Has angels has guns

Has saved has praised

Her exiles-in-life death-returned

For whom the printed page

Is heaven on which their names

Write worlds.

[The Write Pen]

quote]

 

 

Here's one:

 

When I died

they washed me out of the turret

with a hose.

 

The Ball Turret Gunner. I liked that one too, from my youth.

 

danny

Edited February 9, 2009 by The Write Pen

[Huffward]

This now our Heritage

To guard, delight in, brood upon,

And in these transitory fragments scan

The immortal longings in the soul of man.

 

Walter de la Mare

[Bartimaeus]

My knowledge of French is very limited, but I like these lines from Brassens' "La mauvaise herbe":

Les hommes sont faits, nous dit-on

Pour vivre en bande, commes les moutons

Moi, je vis seul, et c'est pas demain

Que je suivrai leur droit chemin

 

[runnjump]

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

 

And for all this nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

 

Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1877

[liapuyat]

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

 

And for all this nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

 

Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1877

 

Oh, but this is one of my favorites too!!! Thank you!

 

[DavidA]

 

Then dawns the Invisible; the Unseen its truth reveals;

My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels;

Its wings are almost free--its home, its harbour found,

Measuring the gulf, it stoops, and dares the final bound.

 

A verse from "The Prisoner"

 

By Emily Bronte.

 

[LedZepGirl]

Hyla Brook

 

BY June our brook’s run out of song and speed.

Sought for much after that, it will be found

Either to have gone groping underground

(And taken with it all the Hyla breed

That shouted in the mist a month ago,

Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow)—

Or flourished and come up in jewel-weed,

Weak foliage that is blown upon and bent

Even against the way its waters went.

Its bed is left a faded paper sheet

Of dead leaves stuck together by the heat—

A brook to none but who remember long.

This as it will be seen is other far

Than with brooks taken otherwhere in song.

We love the things we love for what they are.

 

-Robert Frost

 

[oldnavy1988]

Such wonderful posts, I love them all. Here is my contribution:

 

To Lucasta, Going to the Wars

 

Tell me not sweet, that I am unkind.

That from the nunnery

Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind

To war and arms I fly.

 

True, a new mistress now I chase

The first foe in the field

And with a stronger faith embrace

A sword, a horse, a shield.

 

Yet this inconsistancy is such

As you too shall adore,

I could not love you so much,

Love I not honor more.

 

----Richard Lovelace

 

 

[YNY]

To A Poet A Thousand Years Hence

 

I who am dead a thousand years,

And wrote this sweet, archaic song,

Send you my words for messengers

The way I shall not pass along

 

I care not if you bridge the seas

Or ride secure the cruel sky,

Or build consummate palaces

Of metal or of masonry.

 

But have you wine and music still,

And statues and a bright-eyed love,

And foolish thoughts of good and ill,

And prayers to them who sit above?

 

How shall we conquer? Like a wind

That falls at eve our fancies blow,

And old Maeonides the blind

Said it three thousand years ago.

 

O friend unseen, unborn, unknown,

Student of our sweet English tongue:

Read out my words at night, alone:

I was a poet, I was young

 

Since I can never see your face,

And never shake you by the hand,

I send my soul through time and space

To greet you. You will understand.

 

-- James Elroy Flecker

 

 

[OboeJuan]

He left it dead

And with it's head

He went galumphing back.

[lawrencehare]

Pertinent to the day methinks...

---

 

AN IMPERIAL RESCRIPT

 

Now this is the tale of the Council the German Kaiser decreed,

To ease the strong of their burden, to help the weak in their need,

He sent a word to the peoples, who struggle, and pant, and sweat,

That the straw might be counted fairly and the tally of bricks be set.

 

The Lords of Their Hands assembled; from the East and the West they drew --

Baltimore, Lille, and Essen, Brummagem, Clyde, and Crewe.

And some were black from the furnace, and some were brown from the soil,

And some were blue from the dye-vat; but all were wearied of toil.

 

And the young King said: -- "I have found it, the road to the rest ye seek:

The strong shall wait for the weary, the hale shall halt for the weak;

With the even tramp of an army where no man breaks from the line,

Ye shall march to peace and plenty in the bond of brotherhood -- sign!"

 

The paper lay on the table, the strong heads bowed thereby,

And a wail went up from the peoples: -- "Ay, sign -- give rest, for we die!"

A hand was stretched to the goose-quill, a fist was cramped to scrawl,

When -- the laugh of a blue-eyed maiden ran clear through the council-hall.

 

And each one heard Her laughing as each one saw Her plain --

Saidie, Mimi, or Olga, Gretchen, or Mary Jane.

And the Spirit of Man that is in Him to the light of the vision woke;

And the men drew back from the paper, as a Yankee delegate spoke: --

 

"There's a girl in Jersey City who works on the telephone;

We're going to hitch our horses and dig for a house of our own,

With gas and water connections, and steam-heat through to the top;

And, W. Hohenzollern, I guess I shall work till I drop."

 

And an English delegate thundered: -- "The weak an' the lame be blowed!

I've a berth in the Sou'-West workshops, a home in the Wandsworth Road;

And till the 'sociation has footed my buryin' bill,

I work for the kids an' the missus.  Pull up?  I be damned if I will!"

 

And over the German benches the bearded whisper ran: --

"Lager, der girls und der dollars, dey makes or dey breaks a man.

If Schmitt haf collared der dollars, he collars der girl deremit;

But if Schmitt bust in der pizness, we collars der girl from Schmitt."

 

They passed one resolution: -- "Your sub-committee believe

You can lighten the curse of Adam when you've lightened the curse of Eve.

But till we are built like angels, with hammer and chisel and pen,

We will work for ourself and a woman, for ever and ever, amen."

 

Now this is the tale of the Council the German Kaiser held --

The day that they razored the Grindstone, the day that the Cat was belled,

The day of the Figs from Thistles, the day of the Twisted Sands,

The day that the laugh of a maiden made light of the Lords of Their Hands.

 

Rudyard Kipling

 

 

[Loddonite]

It is Spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and- rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.

 

... lines that let me know that I'm going to enjoy the next hour or so ...

[carlc]

It is Spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and- rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.

 

... lines that let me know that I'm going to enjoy the next hour or so ...

 

The houses are are blind as moles (though moles see fine tonight in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now.

 

 

[Beechwood]

Again and again the same situation

For so many years

Tethered to a ringing telephone

In a room full of mirrors

A pretty girl in your bathroom

Checking out her sex appeal

I asked myself when you said you loved me

Do you think this can be real?

 

Still I sent up my prayer

Wondering where it had to go

With heaven full of astronauts

And the Lord on death row

While the millions of his lost and lonely ones

Call out and clamour to be found

Caught in their struggle for higher positions

And their search for love that sticks around

 

You've had lots of lovely women

Now you turn your gaze to me

Weighing the beauty and the imperfection

To see if I'm worthy

Like the church

Like a cop

Like a mother

You want me to be truthful

Sometimes you turn it on me like a weapon though

And I need your approval

 

Still I sent up my prayer

Wondering who was there to hear

I said "Send me somebody

Who's strong and somewhat sincere"

With the millions of the lost and lonely ones

I called out to be released

Caught in my struggle for higher achievements

And my search for love

That don't seem to cease

Edited April 3, 2009 by Arthur

[inktree]

"I traveled among unknown men, in lands beyond the sea

Nor, England! Did I know 'til then what love I bore to thee.

'Tis past, that melancholy dream, nor will I quit thy shore

a second time, for still I seem to love thee more and more.

 

Among thy mountains did I feel the joy of my desire

As she I cherished turned her wheel beside an English fire.

Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed the bowers where Lucy played

And thine too is the last green field that Lucy's eyes surveyed."

 

Plus all of the other poems in that series (esp. "She dwelt among the untrodden ways..." and "A slumber did my spirit seal..."), whose name has been rather given away...

 

And this is just the end of one poem, but I really love it:

 

"...That Orpheus self may heave his head

From golden slumbers on a bed

Of heap'd Elysian flowers, and hear

Such strains as would have won the ear

Of Hades, to have quite set free

His half-regained Eurydice.

These delights, if thou canst give,

Mirth, with thee I mean to live."

 

Oh! And this one because of the amazing rhythm:

 

"...Dirty British Coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack

Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,

With a cargo of Tyne coal,

Road-rails, pig-lead,

Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays."

 

(The rest of it is really lovely too.)

 

And, of course...

 

"The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab

and my loitering.

 

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

 

The last scud of day holds back for me,

It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd

wilds,

It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

 

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,

I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

 

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

 

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,

But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,

And filter and fibre your blood.

 

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,

Missing me one place search another,

I stop somewhere waiting for you."

 

 

 

I've overdone it.

 

I'm sure I've butchered the punctuation and whatnot. It's all from my rather fuzzy memory.

Edited April 16, 2009 by inktree

[vans4444]

Invictus- William Ernest Henley

 

OUT of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

 

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

 

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

 

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

 

 

Written from a hospital bed, essentially gives adversity the finger eloquently...

 

 

I was also going to post this poem, but with the comment that while it is not my favorite poem, the last two lines are my favorite lines of poetry.

 

[inktree]

ohh and I love this poem.

 

What I Want Is - C. G. Hanzlicek.

 

What I want is

 

Enough money

 

To have what I want

 

What I want is

 

My own hill

 

And beneath that hill

 

A pond

 

In the pond a lazy

 

Bass or two

 

And duck feathers

 

Resting on the mud

 

Of the shore

 

Between the hill

 

And mud a patch

 

Of grass where I

 

Can lie and count

 

My seven trees

 

My seven clouds

 

And count the coyotes

 

Coming down the hill

 

To drink

 

Coyote 1 Coyote 2

[deauville]

 

 

The life that I have

Is all that I have

And the life that I have

Is yours

 

The love that I have

Of the life that I have

Is yours and yours and yours

 

A sleep I shall have

A rest I shall have

Yet death will be but a pause

 

For the peace of my years

In the long green grass

Will be yours and yours

And yours

 

 

Leo Marks