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Original poster

One single line of poetry....

459 replies

Clawdy · 26/06/2015 15:26

that stays with you? Not necessarily your favourite poem but sometimes just one line....for me it's " What will survive of us is love " from the Philip Larkin poem.

OP posts:
hesterton · 26/06/2015 21:39

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

MissMogwi · 26/06/2015 21:36

Out of the forest I came with my flowers, singing, all alone.

Little Red Cap by Carol Ann Duffy

One of my favourite poems.

serin · 26/06/2015 21:33

She shall be sportive as the fawn that wild with glee across the lawn,
and up mountain streams,
and hers shall be the breathing balm and hers the silence and the calm of mute insensate things.

"Three years she grew in sun and shower" Wordsworth.

Could have been written for DD

TheSweeper · 26/06/2015 21:31

One had a lovely face,
And two or three had charm,
But charm and face were in vain
Because the mountain grass
Cannot but keep the form
Where the mountain hare has lain.

(Yeats' "Memory")

And also

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

(Tennyson's "Eagle")

MrsJackAubrey · 26/06/2015 21:31

"It happens that I am tired of being a man"

Pablo Neruda

Fishandjam · 26/06/2015 21:24

"Fools! For I also had my hour, one far fierce hour and sweet;
There was a shout about my ears, and palms before my feet."

From The Donkey by GK Chesterton.

I'm an atheist, but it always makes me get dust in my eye.

Tizwailor · 26/06/2015 21:20

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

StillProcrastinating · 26/06/2015 21:12

Mine is massively twee, and it was years before I found out the rest of it, and I wasn't impressed, but I do love the verse:

The kiss of the sun for pardon
The song of the birds for mirth
One is nearer God's heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.

Makes me feel safe and happy.

omri · 26/06/2015 21:09

From sleep we wake eternally and death shall be no more.
John Donne

I LOVE this thread. SmileThanks op!

OhIDoLikeToBeBeside · 26/06/2015 21:04

Not living, but rising dead.

Rising five by Nicholas Nicholson.

peltata · 26/06/2015 21:03

The Sick Rose

O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

by William Blake

BlackbirdOnTheWire · 26/06/2015 21:02

We have the builders in at the moment. I'm currently measuring out my life in coffee-spoons, a la Prufrock.

I'm another fan of morning's minion, kingdom-of-daylight's dauphin... And every time I see a line of trees by a river, I think "felled, felled, all are felled". Actually, Hopkins provides so many memorable and apt lines - Glory be to God for dappled things comes to mind a lot.

lots of others but so obscure they would immediately out me to my RL friends who are also MNers and almost certainly on this thread already, judging by a couple of the responses Grin.

ThomasinaCoverly · 26/06/2015 20:58

If ever any beauty I did see
Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.

Donne. Others have quoted other lines from the same poem.

SoftDay · 26/06/2015 20:56

Men that had seen her drank deep and were silent,
The women were speaking wherever she went,
As a bell that is rung or a wonder told shyly,
And oh! she was the Sunday in every week.

  • From "The Planter's Daughter" by Austin Clarke
Fadingmemory · 26/06/2015 20:55

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams

W B Yeats

Peanut14 · 26/06/2015 20:55

Hels71, that line always comes into my head.

Peanut14 · 26/06/2015 20:54

'At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. '

Blackberry picking, Seamus Heaney.

hels71 · 26/06/2015 20:53

Because I could not stop for death she kindly stopped for me. Emily Dickinson

SoftDay · 26/06/2015 20:53

[T]he heart that has truly loved never forgets,
And as truly loves on to the close,
As the sunflower turns on her God when she sets
The same look which she turned when he rose

  • From "Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms" by Thomas Moore
CardinalRed · 26/06/2015 20:53

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die

tea4two4three · 26/06/2015 20:50

"Not waving but drowning" Stevie Smith

Got all the way to pg 6 before I spotted someone else has also said this.

For me it's because I have struggled with depression for half my life. The first time I read that poem I sobbed. It's how I felt. Now I use it as marker. If I can read it without choking up I know I'm ok :-)

secrettobleroneeater · 26/06/2015 20:49

Christina Rossetti:

Remember me when I am gone away

the last line always finishes me off...

better by far you should forget and smile, than that you should remember and be sad

sitting here in floods of tears, remembering DD1

SoftDay · 26/06/2015 20:48

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

  • From "When You are Old" by W.B. Yeats
MrsHenryCrawford · 26/06/2015 20:45

Some strange race wrecked solitary here

Emily Dickenson

YoureAllABunchOfBastards · 26/06/2015 20:44

If we are doing Shakespeare I will be here all night. I can quote forever.

we are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep..