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.

[Hassled]

That Christopher Robin poem makes me well up every time - it is all about the innocence, isn't it?

For me it's the end of To Kill A Mockingbird - the bit where Scout is on Boo's porch seeing the street and events as Boo would have seen them (there's something about how Summer came, and he watched his children's hearts break), and then right at the end about Atticus - "he would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning".

[Hassled]

Oh my word - yes, the end of Lord of the Flies. I read it to the DSs and sobbed embarrassingly.

[oinkling]

There's a bit in Captain Corelli's Mandolin where the occupying German army takes control of the island and is instructed to round up the previously jointly-occupying Italian army (their staunch friends for months) and execute them all by firing squad. Leutnant Gunter Weber protests but gets nowhere apart from having his protest recorded. He also tries to delay shooting his friends but is urged on, with word that more Italians who need to be cut down by rifle fire are soon to arrive. When the crucial time inevitably comes, there are a couple of lines I struggled to read:

"Very well," said Weber, and he closed his eyes and prayed. It was a prayer that had no words, addressed to an apathetic God.

[mignonette]

Ben Jonson 'Part Of An Ode' written about the loss of his own child-

"IT is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May,
Although it fall and die that night;
It was the plant and flower of light.
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures, life may perfect be"

The author Susan Hill had 'A Lily of a Day' from this poem engraved on the headstone of her daughter Imogen, born too premature to survive. I cry whenever I read this poem.

I also cry at 'A Tree Grows In Brooklyn' when Francie loses her Father. And at Raymond Brigg's 'Ethel And Earnest' when they go to see Ethel's body at the morgue and there's a pot of bleach on the table next to her body. Then later on the drawings of Earnest eating his solitary lunch.....'Where The Wind Blows' is heartbreaking too.

[LauraChant]

Oh, I forgot my favourite children's book, The Children of Green Knowe, where Tolly and his grandmother hear a voice singing Lulla Lullay.

"Why are you crying, Granny? It's lovely."
"It is lovely, only it is such a long time ago. I don't know why that should be sad, but it sometimes seems so."
...
She played, but it was Tolly who sang alone, while, four hundred years ago, a baby went to sleep.

[NeoMaxiZoomDweebie]

Laura how lovely.

[Astr0naut]

Oh, the places you'll go. Dr Suess.

Can't remember exact lines, but I can't read it to DS, 3, because of the double edged sword of memories it conjures and the thoguth that that'll be my dcs one day.

[pongping]

If we're moving into other forms (and we should, we should, this thread is giving me goosebumps and i've made a few purchases on Amazon while reading) - Everyone Sang by Siegfried Sassoon:

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields; ononand out of sight.

Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun:
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
Drifted away ... O, but Everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

Some BASTARD included that as one of the poems on the underground and made me weep on my way to work.

[pongping]

Oh, and the play A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, about the struggle of parents to cope with their daughter's disability. There's a wonderful monologue where the mother, Sheila, talks about Joe as a baby - her desperate, desparate hope that Joe knocking over a tower of bricks was deliberate and means progress. Great play.

[MairzyDoats]

Laura that's my favourite children's book too, and my favourite line :)

[Quangle]

I love that Sassoon one. There's a very naff Christmas song that evokes the same in me - the Johnny Matthis song, "When a child is born". It's the line about "For a spell or two, no one feels forlorn". Total sobber.

[FriskyHenderson]

"Not now, Bernard" That poor neglected boy!

Not a book but a song, The Dark is Rising by Mercury Rev:
I dreamed that I was walking
And the two of us were talking
Of all life's mysteries
But words that flow between friends
Winding streams, without end
I wanted you to see
But it can seem surprising
When you find yourself alone
And now the dark is rising
And a brand new moon is born
I always dreamed I'd love you
I never dreamed I'd lose you
In my dreams, I'm always strong

It was on a radio once in the background when I was heavily pregnant and all of a sudden it got very dark outside and I burst into tears and knew I'd be playing it at the baby's funeral. Freaked me right out and I can't hear it without sobbing despite the baby being very grown up now!

[LauraChant]

Hurrah for the Green Knowe love.

Quangle I am the same with When A Child is Born. And Beautiful Boy - when Lennon sings "I can hardly wait/ To see you come of age". And, embarassingly, "did you think I would leave you dying" in Two Little Boys - because I have two little boys. Oh and finally if we are talking about songs: "Goodnight children everywhere, your mummy thinks of you tonight".

[oinkling]

mignonette When The Wind Blows kills me every time. The blithe optimism, especially. Odd parts of it really upset me. Like when Hilda says the grass is a funny colour. It upsets me that they don't understand enough about what's going to happen in what little remains of their lives, even though I don't want them to.

[bassetfeet]

I am loving this thread so much . Thank you from me for all these words .

[LydiasLunch]

LauraChant have you read Memory by Margaret Mahy? Another favourite.

[oinkling]

If we're including songs then "In The Ghetto".

...and his mama cries.

[RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie]

When The Wind Blows :(

[LauraChant]

I haven't Lydia but I shall look out for it. I have tead The Haunting, but ages ago.

[bassetfeet]

Sassoon again

?Who's this?alone with stone and sky?
It's only my old dog and I?
It's only him; it's only me;
Alone with stone and grass and tree.

What share we most?we two together?
Smells, and awareness of the weather.
What is it makes us more than dust?
My trust in him; in me his trust.?
― Siegfried Sassoon

[RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie]

How about Owen's 'Futility?'

Oh what made fatuous sunbeams toil to break earth's sleep at all?

[oinkling]

Doesn't give me the catch in the throat, but Stevenson's Requiem always make me wistful.

Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie:
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you 'grave for me: 5
Here he lies where he long'd to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

[Asheth]

The end of lord of the rings always makes me cry. But especially these words of Gandalf.

Well here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth. Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.

[WillSingForCake]

In Pet Cemetary by Stephen King when the Dad is having a lovely day flying the kite with his little boy Gage and it says '...and Gage, who now had less than three months to live...'.

It's just the way it's dropped casually into the sentence, and its such a shock to the reader. Although to be fair it is a Stephen King book so I couldn't really hope for a book just filled with happy father-son kite-flying sessions

[SuperLemonCrush]

Vitai Lampada
("They Pass On The Torch of Life")
There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night --
Ten to make and the match to win --
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote --
'Play up! play up! and play the game!'

The sand of the desert is sodden red, --
Red with the wreck of a square that broke; --
The Gatling's jammed and the Colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks,
And England's far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks:
'Play up! play up! and play the game!'

This is the word that year by year,
While in her place the School is set,
Every one of her sons must hear,
And none that hears it dare forget.
This they all with a joyful mind
Bear through life like a torch in flame,
And falling fling to the host behind --
'Play up! play up! and play the game!'

Sir Henry Newbolt (1862-1938)