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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:
fourquenelles · 27/06/2015 21:21

"Is there anybody there?" said the Traveller;
Knocking on the moonlit door .........

The Listeners by Walter de la Mare

Gothic, spooky. What is the story? An English O level poem back in the early 70s that has stayed with me over the years.

GypsyFloss · 27/06/2015 21:19

I also love this line from Yeats

"was there another Troy for her to burn?"

I did Yeats for my exams in Ireland in the 80's and DD did them for A level English lit. It's been lovely to revisit some of his work with her.

Azquilith · 27/06/2015 21:12

Odi et amo....Nescio sed fieri sentio et excrucior
I hate and I love. I do not know why but I feel it and I am torn in two.
Catullus

AnUtterIdiot · 27/06/2015 21:05

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

AnUtterIdiot · 27/06/2015 21:03

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GoodToesBadToes · 27/06/2015 20:54

Another Yeats fan here

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?

AnUtterIdiot · 27/06/2015 20:51

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GreatAuntDinah · 27/06/2015 20:49

Der kleinste lebendige Philister Zu Stuckert am Neckar, viel glücklicher ist er Als ich, der Pelide, der tote Held, Der Schattenfürst in der Unterwelt

Heine, Der Scheidende

AnUtterIdiot · 27/06/2015 20:48

This reply has been deleted

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CountTessa · 27/06/2015 20:47

I think grease is having an affair with me - from a poem in the Lazy Thoughts for a lazy woman collection by Grace Nicholls

AnUtterIdiot · 27/06/2015 20:47

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susurration · 27/06/2015 20:46

'If you can dream- and not make dreams your master; If you can think- and not make thoughts your aim.' If by Rudyard Kipling. Love the whole poem.

skorpion · 27/06/2015 20:45

Yes, and thanks for the trouble you took from her eyes
I thought it was there for good so I never tried

Well, all of Cohen's Famous Blue Raincoat actually.

CoogerAndDark · 27/06/2015 20:30

He stumbled Suddenly finally conscious of all he lacked
On a manhole under the hollyhocks

Thurlow · 27/06/2015 20:29

marshmallowpies, there's a series on at the moment about foster kids and one of the teenage boys, who had been placed happily with foster parents several years ago, wrote a story about being with them. It had to be based around a line of poetry and he wrote it about moving in with his foster family and and it being a clean slate, with your own face on. I was absolutely sobbing. Such a beautiful and brave boy.

Edge by Plath has always stuck with me:

She has folded
Them back into her body as petals
Of a rose close when the garden
Stiffens and odors bleed
From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.

Also WS Merwin:

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle
Everything I do is stitched with its color

Rhubarbgarden · 27/06/2015 20:23

(Paul Simon)

Rhubarbgarden · 27/06/2015 20:23

Losing love is like a window in your heart
Everybody sees you're blown apart
Everyone feels the wind blow

Rhubarbgarden · 27/06/2015 20:21

Is it the hour? We leave this resting-place
Made fair by one another for a while.
Now, for a god-speed, one last mad embrace;
The long road then, unlit by your faint smile.
Ah! the long road! and you so far away!
Oh, I’ll remember! but … each crawling day
Will pale a little your scarlet lips, each mile
Dull the dear pain of your remembered face.

…Do you think there’s a far border town, somewhere,
The desert’s edge, last of the lands we know,
Some gaunt eventual limit of our light,
In which I’ll find you waiting; and we’ll go
Together, hand in hand again, out there,
Into the waste we know not, into the night?

Rupert Brooke

SmartiesMakeMeNaughty · 27/06/2015 20:20

The beautiful and under-recognised Rosemary Tonks:
Story Of A Hotel Room
Thinking we were safe-insanity!
We went in to make love. All the same
Idiots to trust the little hotel bedroom.
Then in the gloom…
…And who does not know that pair of shutters
With all the awkward hook on them
All screeching whispers? Very well then, in the gloom
We set about acquiring one another
Urgently! But on a temporary basis
Only as guests-just guests of one another’s senses.

But idiots to feel so safe you hold back nothing
Because the bed of cold, electric linen
Happens to be illicit…
To make love as well as that is ruinous.
Londoner, Parisian, someone should have warned us
That without permanent intentions
You have absolutely no protection
-If the act is clean, authentic, sumptuous,
The concurring deep love of the heart
Follows the naked work, profoundly moved by it.

NewFlipFlops · 27/06/2015 19:46

I balanced all, brought all to mind
The years to come seemed waste of breath
A waste of breath, the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

Yeats, An Irish Airman Foresees His Death (my favourite poem).

MrsFring · 27/06/2015 19:25

The despairing Hopkins, a Jesuit priest, calling out to his God for the divine inspiration which he felt eluded him:

'Birds build- but not I build; no, but strain,
Times eneuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
Mine, O thou Lord of Life,
Send my roots rain!'

If only he knew.

NoraLouca · 27/06/2015 16:08

Amid all the sham and drudgery and broken dreams, it's still a beautiful world. The desiderata of happiness

BobbyGentry · 27/06/2015 15:54

"But they were fucked 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."

This be the verse, Larkin.

NurNochKurzDieWeltRetten · 27/06/2015 13:35

Anutteridiot has that been rollingaround my head slightly inaccurately all these years,? Blush should have looked it up I suppose

Only1scoop · 27/06/2015 13:30

'There's a certain slant of light on winter afternoons'

Emily Dickinson

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