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've only got as far as page 5 and I'm wreck. My 4 year old ds just said 'I think you're poorly, mummy. Your eyes are all watery'.

What a beautifully literary lot you are.

Oh you total bitches - have had to pretend a coughing fit to escape to kitchen and wipe my eyes!! Had told DH the subject of the thread and he looked baffled, "I've never cried at a book"

Anyone mentioned Mill on The Floss? "In death they were not divided". Made all 7 of us blub in Eng Lit A level class, we were reading the book aloud (do they still so that in schools? Was lovely but surely took a lot of time that could have been spent actually discussing the books?

DD1 (20yo) has just added that Mick Inkpen's "Nothing" and "The Mousehole Cat" were her blubfest books as a child, Harry Potter & The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas now (particularly since she has visited Auschwitz)

And who was it that posted the bit from Goodbye Mog???? I can't even say the name of that book out loud - I dread the day that the youngest brings it home from the library.

I am the goose girl, I am the true bride. I am Ruby Lennox still.

Oh Alpaca, now I can't get that out of my head and I've never read the book. Poor lonely boy

A March Calf by Ted Hughes. Can't choose a line, they're all beautiful and terrible in their truth, so the last four then:

Soon he'll plunge out, to scatter his seething joy,
To be present at the grass,
To be free on the surface of such a wideness,
To find himself himself. To stand. To moo.

By the time I get there I'm finished because there's no doubt of the fate of the trusting and eager 'Little Fauntleroy - quiffed and glossy,'

Gaaaah bloody hell, there I go...

Before I go and read the whole thread and end up blubbing.

...in a good way, "Placetne, magistra?"

In tears already.... Just had to add the one that's got me at the moment - The Paper Dolls by Julia Donaldson.

"But along came a boy
With a pair of scissors
And he said, 'I'll SNIP you!'

And he did.

He snipped them into tiny little pieces
And he said, 'You're gone for ever.'

......

And the paper dolls flew...
...into the little girl's memory
Where they found white mice and fireworks,
And a starfish soap,
And a kind granny,
And the butterfly hair slide,
And more and more lovely things each day
And each year.

And the girl grew....
....into a mother
Who helped her own little girl
Make some paper dolls."

LauraChant - me too. I used to read this to my DS at least once a week, and bawl with tears every single time I read it - silly really as I knew the ending! The pctures too add to the emotion.

It's not always books but lyrics.

This one makes my throat catch every time. My boys are growing so quickly...

A dragon lives forever but not so little boys
Painted wings and giant rings make way for other toys.
One grey night it happened, Jackie paper came no more
And puff that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar.

I was holding out. I really was. But the piece about the dog waiting outside heaven had me in floods on the bus.

One spring day, when the daffodils were blowing on the Ingleside lawn, and the banks of the brook in Rainbow Valley were sweet with white and purple violets, the little, lazy afternoon accommodation train pulled into the Glen station. It was very seldom that passengers for the Glen came by that train, so nobody was there to meet it except the new station agent and a small black-and-yellow dog, who for four and a half years had met every train that had steamed into Glen St. Mary. Thousands of trains had Dog Monday met and never had the boy he waited and watched for returned. Yet still Dog Monday watched on with eyes that never quite lost hope. Perhaps his dog-heart failed him at times; he was growing old and rheumatic; when he walked back to his kennel after each train had gone his gait was very sober now--he never trotted but went slowly with a drooping head and a depressed tail that had quite lost its old saucy uplift.

One passenger stepped off the train--a tall fellow in a faded lieutenant's uniform, who walked with a barely perceptible limp. He had a bronzed face and there were some grey hairs in the ruddy curls that clustered around his forehead. The new station agent looked at him anxiously. He was used to seeing the khaki-clad figures come off the train, some met by a tumultuous crowd, others, who had sent no word of their coming, stepping off quietly like this one. But there was a certain distinction of bearing and features in this soldier that caught his attention and made him wonder a little more interestedly who he was.

A black-and-yellow streak shot past the station agent. Dog Monday stiff? Dog Monday rheumatic? Dog Monday old? Never believe it. Dog Monday was a young pup, gone clean mad with rejuvenating joy.

He flung himself against the tall soldier, with a bark that choked in his throat from sheer rapture. He flung himself on the ground and writhed in a frenzy of welcome. He tried to climb the soldier's khaki legs and slipped down and groveled in an ecstasy that seemed as if it must tear his little body in pieces. He licked his boots and when the lieutenant had, with laughter on his lips and tears in his eyes, succeeded in gathering the little creature up in his arms Dog Monday laid his head on the khaki shoulder and licked the sunburned neck, making queer sounds between barks and sobs.

The station agent had heard the story of Dog Monday. He knew now who the returned soldier was. Dog Monday's long vigil was ended. Jem Blythe had come home.

Good Lord, this thread makes me weep every time.

'My Henry' is my ultimate tearjerker, where she reminisces about the life they had.

I cannot risk reading the rest of this thread! I was in bits the last time.

Oh, and the bit in Maggie O'Farrell's The Hand that First Held Mine where Lexi knows she is going to die and realises she won't 'zip up [her son's] kagoul' among other mundane motherly things... I sobbed.

I first heard these lines when my boyfriend played Proctor at the local Arts Centre. I sat in on many many rehearsals and was still moved. That was 40 years ago. We are still together.

Lots of books but none that haven't been mentioned so a song by Tracy Chapman that never fails to have me in tears

"The Only One"

She was the only one
Of my flesh and blood
Now I have no calling
I can do no worldly good

I sit silent
I sit mourning
I sit listless all the day
I've mostly lost the voice to speak
And any words to say except
Does heaven have enough angels yet?

I've gone hard
And I've gone cold
I can't make the piece of this cracked life fit
Please forgive me for wanting to know
Does heaven have enough angels yet?

Together oh together
No there'll be no more of that
But I would not dare for myself to ask
Does heaven have enough angels yet ?

She was the only one
Of my own flesh and blood
Sometimes I hear her calling
Straight from the house of god

So many of my favourites are mentioned.

The latest one to make me cry was Wenceslas by Carol Ann Duffy. The end is
"Then Wenceslas sat the poor man down,
poured Winter's Wine,
and carved him a sumptuous slice
of the Christmas Pie...

as prayers hope You would, and I."
I burst into tears at Christmas over this.

This one made me cry on the metro lately from The Hedge Knight by George RR Martin
"ARE THERE NO TRUE KNIGHTS AMONG YOU?
Only silence answered."
This could be the motto of the Song of Ice and Fire.

Hilaire Belloc's poem about the death of his small son

Your life is like a little winter’s day
Whose sad sun rises late to set too soon;
You have just come—why will you go away,
Making an evening of what should be noon?
Your life is like a little flute complaining
A long way off, beyond the willow trees;
A long way off, and nothing left remaining
But memory of a music on the breeze.

Your life is like a pitiful leave-taking
Wept in a dream before a man’s awaking,
A Call with only shadows to attend:
A Benediction whispered and belated
Which has no fruit beyond a consecrated,
A consecrated silence at the end

And the chapter Poor Ginger from Black Beauty.
I said, "You used to stand up for yourself if you were ill-used."

"Ah!" she said, "I did once, but it's no use; men are strongest, and if they are cruel and have no feeling, there is nothing that we can do, but just bear it -- bear it on and on to the end. I wish the end was come, I wish I was dead. I have seen dead horses, and I am sure they do not suffer pain; I wish I may drop down dead at my work, and not be sent off to the knackers."

I was very much troubled, and I put my nose up to hers, but I could say nothing to comfort her. I think she was pleased to see me, for she said, "You are the only friend I ever had."

Just then her driver came up, and with a tug at her mouth backed her out of the line and drove off, leaving me very sad indeed.

A short time after this a cart with a dead horse in it passed our cab-stand. The head hung out of the cart-tail, the lifeless tongue was slowly dropping with blood; and the sunken eyes! but I can't speak of them, the sight was too dreadful. It was a chestnut horse with a long, thin neck. I saw a white streak down the forehead. I believe it was Ginger; I hoped it was, for then her troubles would be over. Oh! if men were more merciful they would shoot us before we came to such misery.

To TheOriginalSteamingNit -- I always cry at Behind the Scenes at the Museum, when Ruby says 'Poor Pearl, poor Gillian, poor Patricia' and the therapist says 'And does nobody ever say "Poor Ruby"'. Poor Ruby, and her sisters that she would keep in her bottom drawer.

Leafy-with-love banks and the green waters of the canal
Pouring redemption for me, that I do
The will of God, wallow in the habitual, the banal,
Grow with nature again as before I grew.
The bright stick trapped, the breeze adding a third
Party to the couple kissing on an old seat,
And a bird gathering materials for the nest for the Word
Eloquently new and abandoned to its delirious beat.
O unworn world enrapture me, encapture me in a web
Of fabulous grass and eternal voices by a beech,
Feed the gaping need of my senses, give me ad lib
To pray unselfconsciously with overflowing speech
For this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven
From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven.

from Patrick Kavanagh's Poem "Canal Bank Walk"

Cheating slightly, because it doesn't make me emotional as such, but Hamlet's 'there's nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so' has stuck with me since school - it sounds self-evident, but it seems to sum up a philosophy with which I wholeheartedly agree.

From Lord of the Flies at the end when the naval(?) captain has arrived:
Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart and the fall through the air of the true wise friend called Piggy.

We read LotF for GCSE and that scene has always stayed with me.

I read 'The Silver Sword' to my children - but when I got to the last few chapters, because I knew that there was going to be a happy ending for them I struggled to keep reading.

Sometimes you look at books in a new light as you get older. As a child I'd found Beth's death in 'Good Wives' maudlin 19th century melodrama. But when my sister died, I realised that it was, in a slightly sanitised way, an accurate description of a much loved person's death.

A poem, read at the funeral of a dear baby girl, who was born to parents who knew she was being born to die:

"In a Baby Castle just beyond my eye
My baby plays with angel toys that money cannot buy
Who am I to wish her back, Into this world of strife
No, play on my baby, You have eternal life

At night when all is silent and sleep forsakes my eyes
I hear her tiny footsteps come running to my side
Her little hands caress me, so tenderly and sweet
I'll breathe a prayer and close my eyes and embrace her in my sleep

Now I have a treasure that I rate above all other
I have known true glory, I am still her mother."

Oh no - now I'm tearing up.

. . . no, honestly I'm fine - just got something in my eye, that's all (sniff). Stupid dust. (weeps uncontrollably)

I've never read Peter Pan, but the Disney version always makes me want to cry at the loss of childhood/having to grow up - stupid I know!