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.

Elephants that's so interesting....I was reminded of The Children of Green Knowe by this thread....and watched a good portion of the original series the other night on Youtube. I wondered about it being a good way to get DD1 to drop her fear of ghosts!

Clicked on this thread from the DOTD intro and was just about to say all the quotes to have our kitchen redone made my eyes water, but I fear I may have got the wrong end of the stick

Lavender, that Pratchett quote about belief is my favourite as well - I've posted it on similar threads in the past.

Since you've already quoted it, I'll have to go for 'Reader, I married him'. Or, better still, 'What willl remain of us is love' - a startlingly positive line from Philip Larkin.

Owl Babies "And she came "

The last page of 'Once there were giants' always makes me cry when the girl has a baby of her own. I read it to DS2 last night and he thought I was a little crazy sobbing through the last few lines.

Since we're on to poetry, I'll add a beautiful poem by Richard Wilbur. The language is so precise and perfect, the images are just amazing, and the depth of emotion that the father feels for his daughter is so beautifully articulated. It is just a little gem of a poem.

The Writer

In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,

And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,

It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.

It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me

By Emily Dickinson, I'm not sure why.

Also Goodnight Mister Tom, lots of it but the bit with the cupboard and the baby, just gutting

"The idea hovered and shimmered delicately, like a soap bubble, and she dared not even look at it directly in case it burst. But she was familiar with the way of ideas, and she let it shimmer, looking away, thinking of something else." - His Dark Materials, I think the first book. There are lots in these books but that is my favourite!

" She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!
She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years,
Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!" - The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes

Others from The Velveteen Rabbit, Micheal Morphurgo's The Wreck of the Zanzibar, and Heidi, LOTR, The Toymaker... I spent quite a lot of childhood hiding under the covers with a torch and crying at my books! (In a good way!)

Lazy that puts me in mind of Terry Pratchett's Moving Pictures where he talks of "Holy Wood"....and how the idea of stardom was something which was base and wild...and how it emerged from the very hillside...

Something invisible. Something joyous and selfish and marvelous. Something as intangible as an idea, which is exactly what it was. A wild idea.

That always moves me oddly.

I also love:

"Of course it is happening in your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"

Oddly, I can remain mostly dry-eyed through all of AA Milne's work, apart from the dedication from (I think) the first Pooh book:

You gave me Christopher Robin, and then
you breathed new life in Pooh.
Whatever of each has left my pen
Goes homing back to you.
My book is ready, and comes to greet
The mother it longs to see-
It would be my present to you, my sweet,
If it weren't your gift to me.

It's the last two lines.

I love the line at the end of Angela Carter's Magic Toyshop when they have escaped from the mad toymaker - a young man and woman:
"At night, in the garden, they gazed at each other with a wild surmise" - or something like that. It always makes me think of the start of my relationship with DH - that 'wild surmise' when you don't know each other and are deciding whether to risk your feelings....

Port,

Your dog one has me in floods as we have recently got the most affectionate adoring pooch in the world.. where does it come from?

There is a heart rending Kipling equivalent about four feet pattering behind.

Now we've mentioned Kipling I have to add "If" to the list. It always makes me tear up....

The sunlight on the garden hardens and grows cold/ We cannot cage the minute within its nets of gold/When all is told, we cannot beg for pardon.

Louis MacNeice.

The last line of Black Beauty. 'My troubles are all over, and I am at home; and often before I am quite awake, I fancy I am still in the orchard at Birtwick, standing with my old friends under the apple trees.'

Oh God

So much sobbing; the His Dark Materials bits, and Watership Down particularly. To add to the tears:

?And I tell you, if you have the desire for knowledge and the power to give it physical expression, go out and explore. If you are a brave man you will do nothing: if you are fearful you may do much, for none but cowards have need to prove their bravery. Some will tell you that you are mad, and nearly all will say, ?What is the use?? for we are a nation of shopkeepers, and no shopkeeper will look at research which does not promise him a financial return within a year. And so you will sledge nearly alone, but those with whom you sledge will not be shopkeepers: that is worth a good deal. If you march your Winter Journeys you will have your reward, so long as all you want is a penguin?s egg.?

From "The Worst Journey in the World". Heartbreaking.

YY to Black Beauty. The book is so moving & the film is an utter sobfest - even DH was teary. That bit at the end when he imagines himself back in the orchard with his mum & Merrylegs ~waaaaah!~

Oh, and if we're doing songs as well....Scattered Black and Whites by Elbow is beautiful. Makes me cry every time I listen to it. I was brought up by my nan and grandad so it really resonates with me. Especially the line 'And he talks of people ten years gone like I've known them all my life, my scattered black and whites.'

They've always talked to me about their parents and I do feel like I knew them, even though I never met them. I want to do the same with my children.

PaperSeagull That's lovely.

I've never come across Richard Wilbur before.

This got me, from the first Hunger Games book, especially the last line. I couldn't believe how much it affected me, even though I was only 25 pages in.

The something unexpected happens. At least, I don?t expect it because I don?t think of District 12 as a place that cares about me. But a shift has occurred since I stepped up to take Prim?s place, and now it seems I have become someone precious. At first one, then another, then almost every member of the crowd touches the three middle fingers of their left hand to their lips and holds it out to me. It is an old and rarely used gesture of our district, occasionally seen at funerals. It means thanks, it means admiration, it means good-bye to someone you love.

ithaka "wild surmise" is originally from a sonnet by Keats, "On first looking into Chapman's Homer".

Stopping by Woods on A Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

The woods are lovely,dark and deep
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

So he left her and she was alone. Very few people cared for her, and she for very few people. She remained alone with herself, waiting.

D H Lawrence

Wordsworth We are Seven

      A SIMPLE Child,
      That lightly draws its breath,
      And feels its life in every limb,
      What should it know of death?

      I met a little cottage Girl:
      She was eight years old, she said;
      Her hair was thick with many a curl
      That clustered round her head.

      She had a rustic, woodland air,
      And she was wildly clad:                                    10
      Her eyes were fair, and very fair;
      --Her beauty made me glad.

      "Sisters and brothers, little Maid,
      How many may you be?"
      "How many? Seven in all," she said
      And wondering looked at me.

      "And where are they? I pray you tell."
      She answered, "Seven are we;
      And two of us at Conway dwell,
      And two are gone to sea.                                    20

      "Two of us in the church-yard lie,
      My sister and my brother;
      And, in the church-yard cottage, I
      Dwell near them with my mother."

      "You say that two at Conway dwell,
      And two are gone to sea,
      Yet ye are seven!--I pray you tell,
      Sweet Maid, how this may be."

      Then did the little Maid reply,
      "Seven boys and girls are we;                               30
      Two of us in the church-yard lie,
      Beneath the church-yard tree."

      "You run about, my little Maid,
      Your limbs they are alive;
      If two are in the church-yard laid,
      Then ye are only five."

      "Their graves are green, they may be seen,"
      The little Maid replied,
      "Twelve steps or more from my mother's door,
      And they are side by side.                                  40

      "My stockings there I often knit,
      My kerchief there I hem;
      And there upon the ground I sit,
      And sing a song to them.

      "And often after sunset, Sir,
      When it is light and fair,
      I take my little porringer,
      And eat my supper there.

      "The first that died was sister Jane;
      In bed she moaning lay,                                     50
      Till God released her of her pain;
      And then she went away.

      "So in the church-yard she was laid;
      And, when the grass was dry,
      Together round her grave we played,
      My brother John and I.

      "And when the ground was white with snow,
      And I could run and slide,
      My brother John was forced to go,
      And he lies by her side."                                   60

      "How many are you, then," said I,
      "If they two are in heaven?"
      Quick was the little Maid's reply,
      "O Master! we are seven."

      "But they are dead; those two are dead!
      Their spirits are in heaven!"
      'Twas throwing words away; for still
      The little Maid would have her will,
      And said, "Nay, we are seven!"