One single line of poetry....

[Clawdy]

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.

Bumping this thread in honour of UK National Poetry Day, which was yesterday.

And I'll add:

And through some mooned Valhalla there will pass
Battalions and battalions, scarred from hell
The unreturning army that was youth
The legions who have suffered and are dust

• Sassoon

I hope this isn't too wanky but I love this line from a French poem by Jacques Prevert when he describes a kiss

"la petite seconde d'eternite"

I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.

I think that my soul is red
Like the soul of a sword or a scarlet flower:
But when these are dead
They have had their hour.

The quiet house by Charlotte mew

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

...

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Both from The Second Coming by WB Yeats; Always gives me the complete shivers.

also

And I had a prayer like a white rose pinned
On the Virgin Mary’s blouse.

From Patrick Kavanagh's A Christmas Childhood; v poignant somehow, represents a type of living that has disappeared. We did the poem in school and those lines always come back to me...

Love this thread

I know Dulce et Decorum Est has been mentioned, but the final lines just contain so much raw, justified bitterness and anger, they give me the shivers, and bring a lump to my throat.

"My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori."

Another of Wilfred Owen's poems, Anthem for Doomed Youth, starts with the line

"What passing-bells for those who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns"

Beautiful, but I do adore the War poets

Water, water everywhere
And all the boards did shrink,
Water, water everywhere
Nor any drop to drink.

Rime of the Ancient Mariner - Samuel Coleridge

That's from memory so probably horribly wrong. I adore the whole poem, it's wonderful.

What cannot be said will be wept.

Nurturing, healing love.

So much from church services in English and in Latin. The creed always makes me cry.
A bit of Tennyson -
The splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits, old in glory:
The long light shakes across the wakes
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.

Là, tout n'est q'ordre et beauté: luxe, calme et volupté - from l'invitation au voyage by Baudelaire. There's an incredible bit about the polished furniture in their imagined bedroom that I'll just google for...

Here's the poem and translation, anyway
fleursdumal.org/poem/148

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"

Closing lines of Mary Oliver - The Summer Day

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less travelled by
And that has made all the difference.

This is a brilliant thread - lots of poems I love. The raw anger in Dulce et Decorum Est sprung to mind first, but here are a few more:

"In time I learned to get my own back,
Sneering at hockey players who couldn't spell.
Tich died when she was twelve." Wendy Cope, Tich Miller

"Shock black double-down beat bouncing" - Linton Kwesi Johnson, Reggae Sounds

And to lower the tone as far as it can go:
"Beautiful city of Glasgow! I must now conclude my muse
And to write in praise of thee my pen does not refuse,
And which no-one dare gainsay:
But that you are the second grandest city in Scotland at the present day!"
William McGonagall, "Glasgow"

"That we live in a place that is not our own and hard it is in spite of blazoned days..." (Wallace Stevens)

Very relevant at the moment

"All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man in the street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky
There is no such thing as the State
Hunger affords no choice
To the citizen or the police
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I , composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair
Show an affirming flame." (Auden)

"And in the isolation of the sky, at evening casual flocks of pigeons make ambiguous undulations as they sink downward to darkness on extended wings." (Stevens again)

In fact pretty much the whole of "Sunday Morning" is astonishing. If you ever want an explanation of how to find meaning and beauty in a secular world then this poem (along with Larkin's "Church Going") is one to read.

Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there; I did not die

Mary Elizabeth Frye

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
John Gillespie Magee, Jr

I am going to cheat with this one: although to pick a line I would selectthe last verse, the poem is so fab I want to share it:

Who's that knocking on the window,
Who's that standing at the door,
What are all those presents
Lying on the kitchen floor?

Who is the smiling stranger
With hair as white as gin,
What is he doing with the children
And who could have let him in?

Why has he rubies on his fingers,
A cold, cold crown on his head,
Why when he caws his carol,
Does the salty snow run red?

Why does he ferry my fireside
As a spider on a thread,
His fingers made of fuses
And his tongue of gingerbread?

Why does the world before him
Melt in a million suns,
Why do his yellow, yearning eyes
Burn like saffron buns?

Watch where he comes walking
Out of the Christmas flame,
Dancing, double talking:

Herod is his name.

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
Not a line but my father's favourite poem and mine. I said it at his funeral

Life isn't easy
for the Pin Cushion Queen.
When she sits on her throne
pins push through her spleen.

Tim Burton - The Pin Cushion Queen

No amount of poetry can mend this broken heart,
But you could put the Hoover round, that would make a start.

Thanks Billy Bragg.

TS Eliot- Tiresius section of The Wasteland
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.

'....a four foot box. A foot for every year.'

Midterm Break by Seamus Heaney about his wee brother who was killed by a car in 1953.

Also, of course Yeats ' tread softly because you tread on my dreams'
and
Mc Nieces's The Planter's Daughter
'....and oh she was the Sunday in every week'

and all of 'On Raglan Road' by Patrick Kavanagh and sung by Luke Kelly.

The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.

Aunt Jennifer's Tigers by Adrienne Rich

And since Dr Seuss is fair game:

And the turtles of course... all the turtles are free
As turtles and, maybe, all creatures should be.

Yertl the Turtle

"You are terrifying, and strange, And beautiful;
Something not everyone knows how to love."
Warsan Shire - For women who love too much

"No-one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark"
Warsan Shire again but shamefully I forget the name of the piece

"Pure and clean like the cry of a baby
And the universe slide from my side."
Sylvia Plath, The Birthday Present

"That landscape of imperfections his bowels were part of"
And
"A mongrel, working his legs to a gallop
Hustled a gull flock to flap of the sand spit"
Both from Plath's "Suicide Off Egg Rock"

I see it's been mentioned several times already, but the last line of Seamus Heaney's Mid Term Break is heart-rendingly memorable.

I also love Heaney's Act of Union but can't possibly reduce my selection to only a few words. It needs the whole context as its power lies in the way it uses pregnancy as a metaphor for politics/history.

It’s on my warm palm now, your burnished ring!
I feel your ashes, head, arms, breasts, womb, legs,
sift through its circle slowly, like that thing
you used to let me watch to time the eggs"

Tony Harrison, Timer
Has me in tears every time.

There are two lines from books that have stayed with me for a long time, too. Probably because they are both in iambic pentameter (I think?)

"a secret now that only fire can tell"
This is from Lord of the Rings and refers to the ring only showing its markings after being heated up.

"no godless man may sit the seastone chair"
This is from George RR Martin's book A Feast for Crows, aka book 4 of Game of Thrones.