Favourite poetry Lines

namenotavailablE · 03-10-2018 10:53pm

A beautiful sung version of ^^ above:

The Tetrarch · 18-10-2018 5:25pm

I have seen flowers come in stony places
And kind things done by men with ugly faces
And the gold cup won by the worst horse at the races,
So I trust too.

namenotavailablE · 19-10-2018 9:33pm

This poem by Irish composer Thomas Moore (1779–1852) has also been translated into a beautiful Russian folksong, "Vecherniy zvon" (available on Youtube). I actually prefer the folksong version (if possible, view it with an English translation) as it better captures the emotion of the poem (life is passing / the evening bells are tolling for me).

“Those evening bells”

THOSE evening bells! those evening bells!
How many a tale their music tells
Of youth, and home, and that sweet time
When last I heard their soothing chime!

Those joyous hours are passed away;
And many a heart that then was gay
Within the tomb now darkly dwells,
And hears no more those evening bells.

And so ’t will be when I am gone,—
That tuneful peal will still ring on;
While other bards shall walk these dells,
And sing your praise, sweet evening bells.

TheFortField · 28-11-2018 12:45am

“Here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)”

E.E. Cummings

Imhof Tank · 04-12-2018 2:23pm

From "How to Kill" by Keith Douglas from the perspective of a sniper

Now in my dial of glass appears
the soldier who is going to die.
He smiles, and moves about in ways
his mother knows, habits of his.
The wires touch his face: I cry
NOW. Death, like a familiar, hears

And look, has made a man of dust
of a man of flesh. This sorcery
I do. Being damned, I am amused
to see the centre of love diffused
and the wave of love travel into vacancy.
How easy it is to make a ghost

A Summer In Provence · 06-06-2019 11:16pm

"Belonging"

Small spaces of silence
in between borrowed breaths
arms tighten
at the whisper of a name

all the words of the heart
the unanswered questions
are at this moment
blue rolling waves

Eileen Carney Hulme

branie2 · 10-07-2019 3:21pm

Better to reign in Hell, then serve in heaven

Paradise Lost - book 1

Deja Boo · 14-08-2019 3:39am

...weight him with the sleepiness of the moon...

It was a page he had found in the handbook of heartbreak.

TomOnBoard · 14-08-2019 3:51am

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Emma Lazarus... The New Colossus

Black Swan · 14-08-2019 3:51am

"But we can be tranquil
And "thankfill" and proud,
For man's been endowed
With a mushroom-shaped cloud.
And we know for certain
That some lovely day
Someone will set the spark off,
And we will all be blown away!"

(From Merry Minuet by Kinston Trio)

Wtf ? · 14-08-2019 3:56am

''If I give my heart to you, I'll have none and you'll have two''
I'll get my coat.....

Deja Boo · 14-08-2019 4:24am

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night...

Keats

Lefty Bicek · 14-08-2019 4:54am

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

from 'Snow', by Louis MacNeice

Sheridan81 · 14-08-2019 11:20pm

Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?

-from No Second Troy, W.B. Yeats

Deja Boo · 15-08-2019 3:39am

He tells her that the earth is flat —
He knows the facts, and that is that.
In altercations fierce and long
She tries her best to prove him wrong.
But he has learned to argue well.
He calls her arguments unsound
And often asks her not to yell.
She cannot win. He stands his ground.
The planet goes on being round.

Differences of Opinion by Wendy Cope

[Deleted User] · 15-08-2019 3:56pm

She Is Gone by David Harkins

You can shed tears that she is gone
Or you can smile because she has lived

You can close your eyes and pray that she will come back
Or you can open your eyes and see all that she has left

Your heart can be empty because you can’t see her
Or you can be full of the love that you shared

You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday
Or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday

You can remember her and only that she is gone
Or you can cherish her memory and let it live on

You can cry and close your mind, be empty and turn your back
Or you can do what she would want: smile, open your eyes, love and go on

Deja Boo · 18-08-2019 8:28am

Be pleased to walk alone
Take the contradictions
Of your life
And wrap around
You like a shawl...

From "Be Nobody's Darling", by Alice Walker
.

Day Lewin · 18-08-2019 8:31am

"to the last syllable of recorded time"

(Shakespeare, Macbeth)

Ectoplasm · 18-08-2019 9:32am

Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive
But to be young was very heaven.
- William Wordsworth, The Prelude

A mean wind wanders through the backcourt trash.
Hackles on puddles rise, old mattresses
puff briefly and subside
- Edwin Morgan, Glasgow Sonnet i

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains.
- PB Shelly, Ozymandias.

Deja Boo · 21-08-2019 5:49am

From time to time
The clouds give rest
To the moon beholders..
~Matsuo Basho

TheFortField · 03-10-2019 8:31pm

...I have stolen
some of the light which drenches you this midnight
to wish you all the islands in the world
and every one a different kind of peace.

-Jo Shapcott, from 'Northern Lights'

Deja Boo · 22-01-2020 8:57am

"I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go."

From "The Waking" by Theodore Roethke:

Deja Boo · 28-02-2020 8:09am

"Time is ..Too slow for those who wait, Too swift for those who fear, Too long for those who grieve, Too short for those who rejoice. But for those who love, time is not." ~Henry Van Dyke

Deja Boo · 11-03-2020 2:32am

"Part steals, lets part abide; and shakes this fragile frame at eve with throbbings of noontide."

Day Lewin · 17-03-2020 12:17pm

From a favourite poem, The Lotus-Eaters by Tennyson

but these are among my favourite lines of all time.

"...
Here are cool mosses deep,
And through the moss the ivies creep,
And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep. "

igCorcaigh · 17-04-2020 7:46pm

I know you all know this, but this is my first time posting on this side of boards.

I have never really read Shakespeare properly, even in school, but the opening line entered my mind tonight. I was glad that I googled it.

So now in my 46th year it means something to me. I'm a slow learner! Maybe it's the times we live in.

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.

At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.

Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.

And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow.

Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation. Even in the cannon's mouth.

And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined. With eyes severe and beard of formal cut. Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part.

The sixth age shifts.
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound.

Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Rabbit Redux · 09-05-2020 11:25pm

Yeats had all the best lines:

"But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars."

(When You Are Old)

lostcat · 11-05-2020 8:24am

"...We are poor passing facts,
warned by that to give
each figure in the photograph
his living name."

Epilogue, Robert Lowell

Carawaystick · 30-05-2020 1:39am

tossup between

Seamús Ó&#8217 wrote: »

mar smaoinigh mé ar an lá
a bheadh an bháscrann glan
agus an lámh beag - ar iarraidh...

and

Nuala Rua wrote:

Cuirim mo dhóchas ar snámh
i mbáidín teangan
faoi mar a leagfá naíonán
i gcliabhán

Rabbit Redux · 03-08-2020 6:22pm

“History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme”

Seamus Heaney

John Hume RIP

Favourite poetry Lines

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