Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

Mine very favourite is one by Byron, but I don't want it ripped to shreds here and tarnished in my memory forever, so....

my second favourite is:

"He bangs his fists against the posts,
And still insists he sees the ghosts"

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

Byron is pretty good. The Second Coming by Yates is my favourite.

This excluding song lyrics.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

The sun was shining on the sea, shining with all it's might.
And this was odd because it was the middle of the night.


or


Once upon a midnight dreary, as I whacked it, weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten porn, as i nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a slapping, as of someone's violent crapping, crapping on my bathroom floor. Tis some prostitute, I muttered, crapping on my bathroom floor. Only this, and nothing more...

from 'the raven' by unforgiven martyr




or



On arctic floats
That served as boats
The penguins came to kill.

With icy blades
And snow in spades
They landed on Brazil.



from 'attack of the penguins' by aladin-sane

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

Rage, rage against the dying of the light
Dylan Thomas

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

Here I sit, broken hearted.
Came to sh.it, but only farted.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

It's been done to death but my favorite is still the close of The Raven:

And the raven, never flitting
Still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door
And his eyes have all the seeming
Of a demon's that is dreaming
And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor
And my soul, from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

I bomb atomically, Socrates' philosophies
And hypotheses can't define how I be droppin' these
Mockeries, lyrically perform armed robbery
Flee with the lottery, possibly they spotted me

~Rebel I-N-S

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

[ QUOTE ]
This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

[/ QUOTE ]

Holy sh-t I was going to post some Wordsworth line I like but then I saw this and remembered that this speech almost makes me weep.

Cliched, but I also like:
"If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run"
Just that couplet.

I'm thinking of more now, I got a couple favorites, I guess.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (first two stanzas)
By T.S. Eliot

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

-- Randall Jarrell

Almost too obvious, but good imagery, I memorized this one for some grade 6 or 7 thing.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

Damn you for getting to Ball Turret Gunner first.

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?

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

Can I hit in the morning
without givin you half of my dough
and even worse if I was broke would you want me?
if i couldn't get you finer things
like all of them diamond rings bitches kill for
would you still roll?
if we couldn't see the sun risin off the shore of thailand
would you ride then, if I wasn't droppin?
if I wasn't ah, eight figure nigga by the name of Jigga
would you come around me or would you clown me?
if i couldn't flow futuristic would ya
put your two lips on my wood and kiss it - could ya
see yourself with a nigga workin harder than 9 to 5
contend with six, two jobs to survive, or
do you need a balla, so you can shop and tear the mall up?
brag, tell your friends what i bought ya
if you couldn't see yourself with a nigga when his dough is low
baby girl, if this is so, yo..


can I get a [censored] you
to these bitches from all of my niggaz
who don't love hoes, they get no dough

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

POE

All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream...


will forever and always be my favorite...but right behind it is....

CARROLL

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”


i love so many poems...but im also soooo picky wish i had room to list them all without boring everyone [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

POE is by far one of my favorite writers by far though

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

SNICKER-SNACK, BITCHES

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

[ QUOTE ]
SNICKER-SNACK, BITCHES

[/ QUOTE ]

hahah i had this poem memorized when i was a child...my mom would always say it to me from memory and when i learn it we would take turns saying it and leave off and the other would pick up etc etc

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

Forgive the weirdnesses with punctuation I put in to keep the poems as they are.

High Windows
Philip Larkin

When I see a couple of kids
And guess he's fu*cking her and she's
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives--
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
And thought, That'll be the life;
No God any more, or sweating in the dark

About hell and that, or having to hide
What you think of the priest. He
And his lot will all go down the long slide
Like free bloody birds. And immediately

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

by Philip Larkin

"The sun-comprehending glass" is one of my favorite things I've ever read in the English Language.

This Be The Verse

They fu_ck 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.

But they were fu_cked 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.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

(1971), Philip Larkin

I'm also a big fan of Wallace Stevens and T.S. Elliot.

"It is part of his poems' strength to speak directly to most people who come across them. He makes each of us feel that he is 'our' poet, in a way that Eliot, for instance, does not - and each of us creates a highly personal version of his character to accompany his work. Pointing out that he was contradictory doesn't pose much of a threat to these versions. It's more disturbing, however, to say that many of Larkin's inner conflicts evolved in ways his work can only hint at. When he found his authentic voice in the late 1940s, the beautiful flowers of his poetry were already growing on long stalks out of pretty dismal ground.... He understood that the relationship he had created between 'high' art and 'ordinary' existence was a remarkable one, which deserved to be made public."

(Andrew Motion)

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

The Destruction of Sennacherib- Lord Byron

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on"

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

Kay, this thread is a good un, lacking the usual witnit comments etc, and some admirable work been sited. Poe and Kipling are wonderful, and all the quotes of real poetry so far have been spot on.

So here's my very favourite as mentioned in the OP, by Byron:

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

First that popped to mind:

A word is dead
When it is said
Some say

I say it just
Begins to live
That day

GoT

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

there's a great Derek Walcott poem - called Bleecker St. -1962, I think.

short poem - about a couple languishing away on the rooftop in NYC as summer comes to an end - and I don't have it memorized verbatim, I remember the last line...

"I would laugh and dry your damp flesh if you came."

the whole image of the poem, short as it is, is great -

RB

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

The Second Coming -- W. B. Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.



Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

Here is one of my favorites.

"Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!' he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd ?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Their's not to make reply,
Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel'd from the sabre-stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!"

-The Charge of the Light Brigade
Tennyson

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

[ QUOTE ]
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
O luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

[/ QUOTE ]

and

[ QUOTE ]
En Viena hay diez muchachas,
un hombro donde solloza la muerte
y un bosque de palomas disecadas.
Hay un fragmento de la manana
en el mueso de la escarcha
Hay un salon con mil ventanas

Ay, ay, ay, ay,
Toma este vals con la boca cerrada

Este vals, este vals, este vals,
de si, de muerte y de conac
que moja su cola en el mar

Te quiero, te quiero, te quiero,
con la butaca y el libro muerto,
por el melancolico pasillo
en el oscuro desvan del lirio,
en nuestra cama de la luna
y en la danza que suena la tortuga.

Ay, ay, ay, ay,
Toma este vals con la boca cerrada

En Viena hay cuatro espejos
donde juegan tu boca y los ecos,
Hay una muerte para piano,
que pinta de azul a los muchachos.
Hay mendigos por los tejados
Hay frescas guirnaldas de llanto

Ay, ay, ay, ay,
Toma este vals con la boca cerrada

Porque te quiero, te quiero, amor mio,
en el desvan donde juegan los ninos,
sonando viejas luces de Hungria
por los rumores de la tarde tibia,
viendo ovejas y lirios de nieve
por el silencio oscuro de tu frente.

Ay, ay, ay, ay,
Toma este vals con la boca cerrada

En viena bailare contigo
con un disfraz que tenga
cabeza de rio.
Mira que orillas tengo de jacintos
Dejare mi boca entre tus piernas,
mi alma en fotografias y azucenas,
y en las ondas oscuras de tu andar
quiero, amor mio, amor mio, dejar,
violin y sepulcro, las cintas del vals.

[/ QUOTE ]

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

[ QUOTE ]
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.


[/ QUOTE ]

I've always felt that this was one of the best couplets ever in the history of English verse.

Another from Eliot that I like, from The Wasteland:

"-Yet when we came back late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence."

One of the last phrases has always stuck with me also:
"These fragments I have shored against my ruins."

Or from my favorite Eliot poem, "The Hollow Men:"

"We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar"

I have to say that "Howl" is also one of my favorite poems of all time. Just an overwhelming work. Not worth quoting unless in its entirety. Just read this poem and notice that, with all the length, the meandering thoughts, the wild images, there is nothing extraneous in the language. Each image is crisp and well-crafted and every word is important.

There are a ton of poems I'd like to share, that's enough for now.

NT

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

Favorite poem. My favorite lines occur at the end of the poem starting with "I have lingered" and ending with "till human voices wawke us and we drown."
(too lazy to cut and past whole thing..)

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

As I Walked Out One Evening
W.H. Auden

In particular, the sixth stanza:

"But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
"O let not time deceive you
You cannot conquer time."

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

[ QUOTE ]
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

[/ QUOTE ]
perhaps the most misquoted line in the history of poetry. It's a "dishtowel" line on account of being something best quoted on dish towels.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

[ QUOTE ]
You put your bet on number one and it comes up every time.
The other kids have all backed down and they put you first in line.
And so you finally ask yourself just how big you are
and take your place in a wiser world of bigger motor cars.
And you wonder who to call on.
-
Jethro Tull - Thick As A Brick


[/ QUOTE ]

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

Backstroke lover always hidin' 'neath the covers
Till I talked to your daddy he say
He said you ain't seen nothin' till you're down on a muffin
Then you're sure to be a changin' your ways
I met a cheerleader was a real young bleeder
Oh the times I could reminisce
'Cause the best things of lovin' with her sister and her cousin
Only started with a little kiss
Like this

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

in just-

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame baloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old baloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and

the

goat-footed

baloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

Lately Ive really gotten into the work of Rainer Maria Rilke. Here is one that is one of my favorites so far.

Love Song


How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it doesn't touch your soul? How can I raise
it high enough, past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it, among remote
lost objects, in some dark and silent place
that doesn't resonate when your depths resound.
Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin's bow,
which draws one voice out of two seperate strings.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
the droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halve cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(So priketh hem nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

[ QUOTE ]
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (first two stanzas)
By T.S. Eliot

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

[/ QUOTE ]


I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note
by Amiri Baraka


Lately, I've become accustomed to the way
The ground opens up and envelopes me
Each time I go out to walk the dog.
Or the broad edged silly music the wind
Makes when I run for a bus...

Things have come to that.

And now, each night I count the stars.
And each night I get the same number.
And when they will not come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave.

Nobody sings anymore.

And then last night I tiptoed up
To my daughter's room and heard her
Talking to someone, and when I opened
The door, there was no one there...
Only she on her knees, peeking into

Her own clasped hands

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

Hold fast to dreams.
For if dreams die,
Life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams.
For if dreams go,
Life is a barron field, covered with snow.


My 10th grade English teacher made us memorize this poem, and she said that we would never forget the words. We were all like, "Bull [censored]. No way we will remember this crap."

Now, sixteen years later, and I still can't delete it from my memory.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

it's impossible to name a "favorite" for this, there's just too many, but here's a stanza i've always loved:


Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

Re: Favourite lines of poetry/verse?
 

Definitely one of my favorite poems.