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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:
MrsFring · 26/06/2015 17:23

'What system can promise to stay in place,
What structure can promise to hold its shape,
What future can promise to keep its faith?

Everything changed. Nothing is safe.'

Simon Armitage, Out of the Blue ( about 9/11).

Valsoldknickers · 26/06/2015 17:19

Had I the heaven's embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light;
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

By WB Yeats

zoobaby · 26/06/2015 17:18

At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

thinkofablinkingnamewoman · 26/06/2015 17:09

Lay your sleeping head my love
Human on my faithless arm

More Auden - seems to be popular on here!

FraggleHair · 26/06/2015 17:08

It sucked me first, and now sucks thee
And in this flea, our two bloods mingled be

IHeartKingThistle · 26/06/2015 17:06

Ooh And...

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Hopkins.

IHeartKingThistle · 26/06/2015 17:05

Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Dylan Thomas

Allshallbewell · 26/06/2015 17:01

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

'Invictus' by W.E Henley

LeChien · 26/06/2015 16:57

I can only remember ones like:

Brown and furry, caterpillar in a hurry

And

The king asked the queen and the queen asked the dairymaid, "could we have some butter for the royal slice of bread?"

IsItMeOr · 26/06/2015 16:53

Had we but world enough and time...

and

If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know

and

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)

fruminousbandersnatch · 26/06/2015 16:44

To seek, to strive, to find and not to yield.

Ulysses, Tennyson

gymboywalton · 26/06/2015 16:44

is there anybody there? said the traveller knocking on the moonlit door...

PausingFlatly · 26/06/2015 16:42

And took their wages and are dead.

A.E. Houseman's Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries, about the professional British army at the outbreak of the First World War, in response to German propaganda calling the BEF mercenaries.

LaurieFairyCake · 26/06/2015 16:39

'What but design of darkness to appall,
If design govern in a thing so small'

Robert Frost

About a moth being eaten by a spider. And about how frightening it is if God designed it or even more frightening if there's NO design.

Isindemoodforspring · 26/06/2015 16:39

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

DressingGownFrown · 26/06/2015 16:36

[What if I fall?]
Oh, but my darling,
What if you fly?

OnlyLovers · 26/06/2015 16:35

'—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.'

Elizabeth Bishop, 'The Art of Losing'. Makes me howl.

'my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping
but I shall go on living.'

Pablo Neruda, 'The Dead Woman'

Really, show me any line of Neruda (or Rilke) and I'm a sobbing heap. Damn them. Grin

FoulsomeAndMaggotwise · 26/06/2015 16:32

I was going to say the same as manky

"The stars are not wanted now, put out every one.
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun."

WH Auden, I don't remember the name of the poem.

SymphonyofShadows · 26/06/2015 16:32

You came to me this morning, and you handled me like meat.

For Those Who Greeted Me, Leonard Cohen (also used in the song A Thousand Kisses Deep)

PausingFlatly · 26/06/2015 16:32

"What would the dead want from us"

From James Fenton's For Andrew Wood. It's a question I often ask myself, not least with all the WWI centenary events at the moment.

4kidsandaunicorn · 26/06/2015 16:32

...and these 2 lines just for fun:

They tuck you up, your mum and dad
They read you Peter Rabbit, too.
They give you all the treats they had
And add some extra, just for you.

Ormally · 26/06/2015 16:29

Far away is close at hand;
Close-joined, is far away
and

“Once in my youth I gave, poor fool
A solider apples and water
And may I die before you cool
Such drouth as his, my daughter”

Robert Graves.

4kidsandaunicorn · 26/06/2015 16:29

From 'Not all things go wrong':

As you go through hell-keep going,
make no brave oasis there.

PausingFlatly · 26/06/2015 16:29

"Where ignorant armies clash by night."

Arnold's Dover Beach.

For years, I'd just read the first line and skipped to the next page in every anthology. Then one day I foolishly read the whole thing.

Oh my. I sat there, gasping, like a fish that's been gutted so fast it didn't feel the knife.

mankyscotslass · 26/06/2015 16:26

They fuck 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.

Philip Larkin