Lines in books that make your throat catch

[pongping]

Just been re-reading When We Were Very Young, and the lines in the last poem, Vespers, bring a tear to my eye every time:

Hush, hush, whisper who dares,
Christopher Robin is saying his prayers

I'm not sure why - I think it's the beauty of the innocence, the image of a lost world (the book is all nurses and stockings)?

In fact, just the title of the collection gives me a shiver.

I'm so sorry Sarah. I was going to post about hymns, and Christmas ones in particular really get me. O Holy Night is beautiful.

I love John Betjeman's poem Christmas, it's something like this:

And is it true? and is it true?
this most tremendous tale of all?
seen in a stained glass window's hue
and a baby in an ox's stall?
the maker of the stars and sea
become a child on earth for me?

And the whole of Good Wives more or less, especially when Jo refuses Laurie.

And yy to Grapes of Wrath, I must read that again.

From The Color Purple

I'm so scared I don't know what to do.Feel like my mind stuck. I try to speak, nothing come. Try to git up, almost fall. Shug reach down and give me a helping hand. Albert press me on the arm.
When Nettie's foot come down on the porch I almost die. I stand swaying, tween Albert and Shug. Nettie stand swaying tween Samuel and I reckon it must be Adam. Then us both start to moan and cry. Us totter toward one nother like us use to do when us was babies. Then us feel so weak when us touch, us knock each other down. But what us care? Us sit and lay there on the porch inside each other's arms.
After while she say Celie
I say Nettie.

Brief pause while I wipe tears away...

Ah....The Colour Purple....

In floods of tears now. ((((Sarah))) and (((Weareseven)))

My Uncle was a sea captain - this was read at his funeral and it was so fitting and beautiful - not a dry eye in church.

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea.

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home!

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For though from out our bourn of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.

(Crossing The Bar - Tennyson)

Lots of my books have been said, different lines though.

Of Mice and Men: "No Lennie. I ain't mad. I ain't never been mad. I want you to know that." Cry like a baby EVERY year!

To Kill a Mockingbird: "Boo was our neighbour. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good luck pennies, and our lives. But neighbours give in return. We never put back into the tree what we took out of it: we ha given him nothing, and it made me sad."

A Thousand Splendid Suns: "The film playing on the screen is Walt Disney's Pinocchio. Laila does not understand."

You're all buggers I'm properly sobbing now going to have to risk waking up dc's to give them a hug

Ruth Picardie's letters to her children in Before I Say Goodbye, and her husband's account of her last days. It just seems so very honest, it's heroic in such an everyday way.

Death of a son - John Miller
the last verse

He turned over on his side with his one year
Red as a wound
He turned over as if he could be sorry for this
And out of his eyes two great tears rolled, like
stones, and he died

It probably needs the rest of the poem for context, but it makes me weep, every single time.

SarahandFuck I'm very moved by your story, and all the others of real life death-related loss.

Lots have been mentioned but in terms of books I read to my children, these lines really do make me clam up:

"Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!"
"And there in the corner of the blanket, Sophie spun in her very own heart"
"...to go with the sandals and gown, of the Kindest Giant in Town"
"...but today you shall be with me in my garden, which is Paradise"

There is a book called The Bog Baby about little girls who find a creature in the woods and take it home. My dds have borrowed it from the library several times but I just can't read it to them.

It is about letting go of something you love and it just breaks my heart when I think of having to let my girls go out into the world.

I've listened in when Dh reads it to them and he barely makes it through it.

This is a beautiful thread. Sarah and others, I am sorry for your losses.

Can I add the children's book There Are Giants In Our House? No single line but several different ones catch my throat.

As does the account of Beth's death in Little Women.

How sad and moving this thread is. A good old son restores the soul, I think.

Have any of you read A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness? It had every girl in my Year 9 class sobbing last year, and some of the boys too.

I also sobbed my way through Greyhound of a Girl by Roddy Doyle this year.

?I do not think I responded immediately, for it took me a moment or two to fully digest these words of Miss Kenton. Moreover, as you might appreciate, their implications were such as to provoke a certain degree of sorrow within me. Indeed- why should I not admit it? - at that moment, my heart was breaking.? Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day

Oh, and since my Mum died, I can never get through the "and yea, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death" bit in psalm 23. We had our wedding videoed and at that bit I just stop. My heart breaks a bit for the girl in that video every time I see it, as the pain was so very raw. DD won't watch it again as she says "your wedding was too sad."

The end of "A Tale of Two Cities" always gets me:

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known.

Such self sacrifice....

'There must be candles.'

Michael Rosen's Sad Book. Well, all of it really.

I'm sure I've read all the Winnie the Pooh books, and here I am, reeling from reading those quotes. What beautiful, emotive writing.

nightlark, we studied that Death of a Son poem (John Silkin, btw) at school. All these flinty hearted 14 year old girls, reduced to silence and the occasional muffled sob. Incredibly moving. I still find myself thinking of it now, many years later.

Argh so many of these have made me sob in the past.

To add some of my own, the song Two Little Boys ... I leap to turn it off if ever I hear it because I sob from the very beginning.

The Little Prince pretty much the whole way through but especially when he dies at the end. My big confession is that I read this book to a class each afternoon for the last week of term before I was leaving the school. On the last afternoon as they were about to go home and we would all be saying goodbye we got to the very last part. I totally chickened out and knew I couldn't read what was written so I changed the ending! So a whole class of children grew up thinking the Little Prince has a happy ending!

And one final one ... Don't suppose anyone knows a French book called La Petite Fille de M. Linh? I read it for a book club I was in, about an old Asian man who comes as a refugee to Europe with his baby granddaughter after the rest of the family have been blown up. The twist at the end made me sob so loudly I woke my DH up. Then the next day I tried to tell a colleague about the book and broke down sobbing! I suspect this was partly because I was about 8 months pregnant at the time!

Nightlark, could you post the other verses? I've googled it but can't find anything.

My heart goes out to those of you who have experienced loss. The line above about the only person you need to talk to about your loss is the person is the one who is gone is so, so true. What a marvellous insight into the human heart.

Mynameisnotmichaelcaine, I haven't read that, but I have read (and loved) The Knife of Never Letting Go and wept buckets at the love and loss and beauty of the relationship between the protagonist and his faithful dog. Have you read it? Heartbreaking.

Pongping, I have. Loved them, they're fab. A Monster Calls is very different in lots of ways, but absolutely brilliant. There are two versions - the one with the pictures is much better imo.

So glad someone mentioned Flanders Fields, gets me every time as does most war poetry. The Giant's Necklace by Michael Morpurgo, think it's included in his anthology From Hereabouts Hill.

Before there were Giants, and the hymn How Great thou art sung at my Grandad's funeral, always gets me going My friend had her wedding in a church and choose this as one of her hymns (I was a mess! Told her I was just so happy for her on her special day!)

Mog was tired. Mog was dead tired. :(

Owl Babies..... "And she came"

There's a Lewis Carol poem I can't read anymore, since I tried to read it at my father's funeral.