Favourite lines of poetry/verse?

[GuyOnTilt]

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

[whiskeytown]

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

[kitaristi0]

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?

[Matador225]

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

[goofball]

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.

[shadow29]

[ 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 ]

[nothumb]

[ 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

[TheBlueMonster]

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..)

[BoxTree]

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."

[TheBlueMonster]

[ 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.