Favourite lines of poetry/verse?

[Vish]

[ QUOTE ]
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.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's too bad. That's a pretty shitty poem to have stuck in your head.

[Victor]

very nice.

[Victor]

i guess i will post the obvious

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

there is also a sonnet that is great. 116 is the most well-known but i like this other one better. something about a ship on the sea. whatever, i will find it.

[jason_t]

Trees
By Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

[BoxTree]

[ QUOTE ]
Trees
By Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

[/ QUOTE ]

I really like this poem except for the last couplet. Self-referential remarks* in poetry (however humbling) usually don't fit quite right. "Trees" is no exception.

*Poems that are mostly self-referential are an entirely different story.

[Dominic]

From Pablo Neruda's "La Muerta"

If you no longer live,
if you, beloved, my love,
if you
have died,
all the leaves will fall in my breast,
it will rain on my soul night and day,
the snow will burn my heart,
I shall walk with frost and fire and death and snow,
my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping,
but I shall stay alive,

[Dominic]

[ QUOTE ]
Rage, rage against the dying of the light
Dylan Thomas

[/ QUOTE ]

and, as a prose companion to this, from James Joyce's "The Dead:"

Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.

[Aces McGee]

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

[/ QUOTE ]

If this is the Beastie Boy lyric, it's actually "thrusts" not "bangs." If it's not, please ignore me.

-McGee

[diebitter]

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

[/ QUOTE ]

If this is the Beastie Boy lyric, it's actually "thrusts" not "bangs." If it's not, please ignore me.

-McGee

[/ QUOTE ]

No, I read it years ago in a Stephen King non-fiction work called 'dance macabre', well before the BBs. They must have got it from whereever King got his from. And I could remember it wrong, it might well be 'thrusts'.

[Argus]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">En réponse à:</font><hr />
Poems written by masochists flop like cows in the meadow -
Take pity on me, they cry, pay attention, pity on me -
I am so sensitive to nature and full of milk.
Poems should be like pins which prick the skin of boredom
And leave a glow equal in its pride to the gait of the Sadist
Who stuck the pin and walked away.

[/ QUOTE ]
From Norman Mailer's only book of poetry, Deaths for the Ladies.