One or two lines that are amongst your favorites of poetry throughout the land.
Mine? Below.

Did He who make the lamb, make thee?

Terry

Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of Heaven Blossomed
the lovely stars, The forget-me-knots of the angels. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. ...

among many.........

JP

Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.

---John Milton

With heaviness he casts his eye
Upon the road before,
And still remembers with a sigh
the days that are no more...............Robert Southey

john

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion ;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

samuel taylor coleridge

argo

I almost went to bed
without remembering
the four white violets
I put in the button-hole
of your green sweater

--Leonard Cohen

When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,
For all the day they view things unrespected;
But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
And darkly bright are bright in dark directed. ~~William Shakespeare~~

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. (Aristotle)

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings ...

Not happy lines, but I love these-

In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

--Wilfred Owen

pam

so many to choose...

Time heals all wounds.
You will mourn Mother
the rest of your life.

from "Platitudes" Joann Seltzer

Ell

"Rage turns my clearest cry
To witless agony."

Theodore Roathke

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan

The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straights;...on the French Coast the light
Gleams and is gone. The cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!

Mattew Arnold

Tough one! Like others have said, mine change--but here are a couple:

To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife... (Masefield)

What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go. (Roethke)

Our camels sniff the evening and are glad... (Flecker)

Glory be to God for dappled things--
For skies as couple-colour as a brinded cow... (Hopkins)

When the falling stars are shooting,
And the answer'd owls are hooting,
And the silent leaves are still
In the shadows of the hill... (Byron)

Errrrrr....better be stopping now....
ncw

Uno mas...

Once you have swung the sword above your head,
And charged the emperor,
You are destined
To disappoint your mother.

Terry

How to keep from having to change the sheets in the morning:

I learn by waking when I have to go.

ajc: that's one of my fav too

Here's another

I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever dew;
And on thy cheek a fading rose.....(Keats)

I saw their starv'd lips in the gloam
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke, and found me here
On the cold hill side.....(Keats)

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou are, to dust thou returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

longfellow

argo

The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world

Tennyson (Morte D'Arthur)

"one or two lines that are amongst your favorites of poetry"-One two eight what’s the difference. This isn’t my favorite but there amongst the top ten:

To-
By Edgar Allan Poe

I heed not that my earthly lot
Hath little of earth in it,
That years of love have been forgot
In the hatred of a minute:
I mourn not that the desolate
Are happier, sweet, then I
But that you sorrow for my fate
Who am a passer-by.



Post Edited (03-04-04 20:24)

I.T.

Magna res est vocis et silentii temperamentum

We say
such truthful lies because
we must-because we have
no choices.
Face to face
we say them, but our eyes
have different voices.


Samuel Hazo, from (Silence Spoken Here)

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land.
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor turn to leave and yet returning stay...

Christina Rossetti

I think those are the right words. It always makes me cry.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote of her:

My mother bowed her self and wept,
Both my arms fell, and I said,
"God knows I knew that she was dead"
And there all white my sister slept.

Another one of my favorites.

Terry

Hugh almost beat me to it.

'Up, Up, the long, delirious burning blue.'


Jack

"Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow;
Though thou be black as night,
And she made all of light,
Yet follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow."

'Tis my theme poem Terry old pal!

Good work ink ghost. I have memorized that one! Gotta love Poe! & Terry!

~Long is the way, and hard, that out of hell leads up to the light.~

"Show me a hero and I shall write you a tragedy."

I LOVE YOU! (God does too.)

But knowledge is as food, and needs no less
Her temperance over appetite, to know
In measure what the mind may well contain;
Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns
Wisdom to folly, as nourishment to wind.

John Milton Paradise Lost

"A diesel truck bruises my heart in passing"

Unknown

If you know, please tell me

"I "Love Summer more than I hate Winter"

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.

And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I love that poem. It profoundly expresses the relationship between man and biplane and the resulting freedom. This is before flight got too fancy
I

"I "Love Summer more than I hate Winter"

OK. I got a million favourites only! My job is really an easy one to decide

aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!

Mine is these lines if you knew what went on before.

'Sir! I am going many miles to take
A last leave of my son, a mariner,
Who from a sea-fight has been brought to Flamouth,
And there is dying in an hospital. -'

William Wordsworth (Old Man Travelling)



Post Edited (03-18-04 07:57)

EMPRESS of ART, for thee I twine
This wreath with all too slender skill.
Forgive my Muse each halting line,
And for the deed accept the will!


Four Riddles
by Lewis Carroll

I never did figger out how LC meant that to be Ellen Terry. Still, I couldn't follow x*x + 7x + 53 = 11/3 either.

you should pronounce it
"ex squared plus seven ex plus fifty-three equals eleven thirds"
that way the ryhme and the rythm match up.

It's just a quadratic equasion with no solution in the scope of real numbers

Wow, Terry, thanks for starting this thread. I'm trying to catch up on my reading here and I just stumbled upon this thread. I'm glad it hasn't died yet.

Here's another few of my favorite lines by one of my favorite authors, Paul Lawrence Dunbar.

And I deem the stream an emblem fit of human
life may go,
For I find a mind may sparkle much and yet
but shallows show,
And a soul may glow with myriad lights and
wondrous mysteries,
When it only lies a dormant thing and mirrors
what it sees.


Les

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you entrhall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

-Donne

I couldn't let this drop from the board without one of my favorite Shakespearean quotes:

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;. . .

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.



Les

This one by Carl Sanburg is short enough to include all of it:


Grass

PILE the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?

I am the grass.
Let me work.


This is one of my favorites.

john

The dark has its own light.
A son has many fathers.
Stand by a slow stream:
Hear the sigh of what is.
Be a pleased rock
On a plain day.
Waking's
Kissing.
Yes.

-Theodore Roethke

Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

-- Robert Lee Frost, "Nothing Gold Can Stay"



Lady of the Night

I never conquered, rarely came, sixteen just held such better days.

Many of mine have already been quoted but;

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.


or

By the North Gate, the wind blows full of sand,
Lonely from the beginning of time until now!

or

She stood breast-high amid the corn,
Clasp’d by the golden light of morn,

and for fun:

Bathed in the balms of beatified bliss,
beatific itself by beatitude's breath.

Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.

-Oscar Wilde

Who controls the past now
controls the future.
Who controls the present now
controls the past.

"Who controls the past now
controls the future.
Who controls the present now
controls the past."

Um, isn't that also Asian Dub Foundation?

Leicky

Art is long, and time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
-Longfellow's A Psalm of Life

I.T.

Magna res est vocis et silentii temperamentum

The age ed rugged mountains stand
against the creeping hords of man

written by the brothers two

I know should probley stat this topic over but i'm lazy.

This thing alone you have achieved:
Because of you, it is believed

That all who earn their bread by rhyme
Are like yourselves, exuding slime.

Oh, cease to write, for very shame,
Ere all men spit upon our name!

Take up your needles, drop your pen,
And leave the poet's craft to men!

To Certain Poets
by Joyce Kilmer

I.T.

Magna res est vocis et silentii temperamentum

I think F. Scott Fitzgerald would agree with Kilmer's poem:

Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you - like music
to the musician . . . or else it is nothing, an empty, formalised bore
around which pedants can endlessly drone their notes and explanations.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald

The above was an editorial, here's my quote:


Inertia rides and riddles me;
The which is called Philosophy.
---Dorothy Parker

Les



Post Edited (07-22-04 02:35)

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety. Other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies.


My salad days,
When I was green in judgement, cold in blood.
To say as I said then!

--Shakespeare

we must kill our gods before they kill us
not because we will to kill but because
our gods think themselves gods

-Henry Dumas





meriti

================

Sobriety is overrated.

There was a young lady from Nantucket.....

Terry

Its only me
from over the sea
said Barnacle Bill the Sailor

What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee.

Sorry cn't think. workin on some reponses to IanB, Thalia and Lady o the Night --it took about four hours for each.

What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage isa close second to the first, which was on my finger for eigten your,

Three more for the pot:

She is what my heart first awaking whispered the world was
[George Meredith]

Petra the rose red city half as old as time
[Don't know the author, but believe it's from a poem entered for the Newdigate Prize at Oxford University early last century, or earlier]

Before you love,
Learn to run through snow
Leaving no footprint.
[E. Powys Mathers' 'PROVERB' translated from the Turkish]

The first best qualifies to be considered as a favourite 'line' in the sense that the merit is in the line alone, independent of the surrounding lines or whole poem in which it appears. Anyone who Googles this one by GM will find a very long poem of such relentlessly syrupy metre and phrasing that reading it is like being force-fed fudge meringue.

I'm told that the second is also the only memorable line in its poem, but what a line! It still sustains countless Jordan tour organizers.

The third is a complete poemlet by one of the all-time great translators of romantic poetry from the Middle and Far East.

Ian

- "Thou art to me a delicious torment-"

- "We acquire the strength we have overcome. "

both...

Ralph Waldo Emerson



wicked

We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yeild.
--- Tennyson

Mine change constantly, depending on my mood. But when I read a line that stays in my mind, that usually becomes a favorite, like this one:

Dear Dark Side,



Thank you for the note;

It’s sweet of you to write.

Especially since I know you wrote

It in the dark of night.

But most, I thank you for the song

—And so I sing you one:

To those who love, comes love erelong.



With warm regards,



The Sun

(David Madison)

Color The Coast With Your Smile
It the Most Genuine Thing I've Ever Seen
I was So Lost
But Now
I Believe

~ Dashbaord Confessional

She kisses the hand besider her mouth.
It is his hand or her hand, it hardly matters,
there are so many more kisses.

Leonard Cohen, "You have The Lovers"

That is probably my favourite poem of all time.

Perhaps because 53 is prime, (1,2 3, 5, 7, 11, 13...17) times anything, won't divide 53, ot factor (x- )(7x- ), the terms don't factor out, so that we have a "false equation."?

just kidding

Or, can you eat pies that are squared?

Peter

Heree lies the Idaho kid.
Only time he ever did.

Ez

Anthology: An American Mythos*

We differ:
As farmer knows soil
So must you know this matter!
Blood heats city nights
As was ever so in ignorance,
Fit to fatal continent,
To fatal times.
Like Attic Greek
We must know...
(Among unknowing stuff)...
***************the proper time--
Passing
To this separation: Yet joy
Blossoms as sufficient to our
Faculties
Divining
********the dawn-tint of the foam
Where we swam in days past.
So long since the white sea-bird
Swept through the tide to feed.
While rocks skimmed across
Sea-surface as it tossed.
And burning morn
Returned us to tears.

*****A Collage, made only of favorite first lines from favorite poems (can anyone identify them?) after the manner of Oliver Golsmith's Elergy in a Country Graveyard

Bon chance,

Peter

And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains
extended,
And at night the wondrous glory of the everlasting
stars.

Clancy of The Overflow
A.B (Banjo) Paterson

Whatever happened to Vic? I can't believe all the names on this thread. I think it shows how each of us has been touched by poetry at some time in our lives


Les

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/02/2009 09:26PM by les712.

This does read like a who's who of emule, Les. It reminds me of how enriched our lives were made, if only briefly, by the likes of Vic, Gwydion, Angelina, Northcountrywoman, Anthony (AJC), John Summers, David, JP, L, Hugh, Pam Adams, and others who haven't posted here for years. Tennyson's observation really does say it best:

The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world

Joe

It reminds me of how enriched our lives were made, if only briefly, by the likes of ...(Our e-mule friends).


I hear you Joe.


The most called-upon prerequisite of a friend is an accessible ear.
-- Maya Angelou


Les

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2009 10:17AM by les712.

Jack, JP, NCW, Kellygirl, AJC, Ellen, JH, many many listed here, and some before.

Their names were frequent mentioned
By the lonely passerbys
And were printed by the children
In pastel water colors
On the fading yellow paper
As they crouched in many places
In the cobweb covered corners
Of the dark and crumbling hallways
That comprise the maze of evening
Where I have wandered aimless
Oft alone and often silent
In my mind.

(mine)

We have indeed been in good company these few years. Terry, I like the piece you posted, I too am oft 'Where I have wandered aimless/Oft alone and often silent/In my mind.'

avanti,

Peter

Terry, as to your little ditty above, I don't recognize the lyrics, but the melody is familiar.

His life is a watch or a vision
Between a sleep and a sleep.
--A.C. Swinburne


Les

Merc, I really like what you wrote here, is that the entire piece?


As for the original question...


"nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands" to end ee cummings' "Somewhere I have never travelled,gladly beyond"

A Weekend Diary - John Hegley

FRIDAY
Hot.
Stretched out on hilltop all afternoon
wondering am I in wrong job?
Bloody Judas.

SATURDAY
Stayed in.

SUNDAY
Woke up feeling brilliant.
Visited friends - surprised to see me.

heh heh

Aaron, that's all of it.

Thanks.

"Sing me a starry night." -- Joni Mitchell

Actually, the quote is her mimicking fans calling out for a favorite song, that no one evver called out to Vincent Van Gogh, "Paint me a Starry Night."--which I thought was very poetic on her part.

"Sweeten my coffee with a morning kiss" - Peter Gallagher (from the song, "Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye," sung by The Casinos, and others).

[www.youtube.com]

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/08/2009 07:58AM by hpesoj.

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.

-- Robert Frost, from "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"

I'll die for your sins if you live for mine - Jim Carroll

Basketball Diaries was one of the movies that stuck in my head, and the line above is from his book called Fear of Dreaming.

Another line that sticks is from Beck and the song, "loser"

In the time of chimpanzees, I was a monkey.

I come back, as always, to Edward Estlin Cummings.
I first read him (in books) when I was 14 - fifty years ago - and I'm still reading him (online) now.
How to choose though? Well, poetry is at its best when it applies directly to the reader's experience. So, when my Mum died, this is what I read:

'if there are any heavens my mother will (all by herself) have
one. It will not be a pansy heaven nor
a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but
it will be a heaven of blackred roses

my father will be (deep like a rose
tall like a rose)

standing near my

(swaying over her
silent)
with eyes which are really petals and see

nothing with the face of a poet really which
is a flower and not a face with
hands
which whisper
This is my beloved my

(suddenly in sunlight

he will bow,

& the whole garden will bow)

The best line? The first.

Stephen

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/28/2009 06:28PM by misterF.

what, we've become so sophisticate that we left emily out in the cold?
"And then a Plank in Reason, broke,..."


Poor old Sandburg's perfect image in "Fog," true, no memorable line, but the image
of the 'padded feet' of the cat won't be forgotten.

double entry-deleted

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/29/2009 11:45AM by oldeyes.

What thou lovest well remains,

                             the rest is dross

Nought may endure but Mutability (Shelley)

Maybe, i'm a king.

~ William Stafford

When stiff and sore and scarred
I take away my hand
From leaning on it hard
In grass and sand,

The hurt is not enough:
I long for weight and strength
To feel the earth as rough
To all my length.

Robert Frost : To Earthward

ahhhhhh

...sometimes when i'm angry, cannon music soothes me...



gosh, you guys! what have you been duking about since i've been in here last time? sometime back when i tried to log in, the site was hacked (again). now i see that parts of you are back. do i need a program to sort out what i've missed?

yah! I lost my left elbow to 210. Still missing. If you see him, tell him to drop into SF and I'll buy yous a cup of Italian coffee.

bump