The best lines of poetry ever

[sandandfoam]

What do you consider to be the best line or two of poetry (as opposed to poem) ever written?
In my view the last two lines of Among School Children by W.B. Yeats are supreme

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?

 

[DarkSun]

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep - while I weep!

Dream within a Dream - Edgar Allan Poe.

 

[Stellify]

Haha This is basically what my signatures always are. A few lines I love.

My current one is from "The Call" by Thomas Osbert Mordaunt:

"One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name."

I also love "How Far?" by Vassar Miller. The last half of the poem is my favorite, especially the last stanza. Here is the last half:

How far is it to you by air?
Ten thousand thunders,
Countless ice crystals set aflare
With rainbow wonders.

How far is it to you by light?
Two parted petals
Of eyelids flowering with sight
Where sunshine settles.

How far is it to you by love?
I have no notion.
For so to seek and find you prove
One selfsame motion.

 

[Stellify]

Also, from "The Snow Man" by Wallace Stevens:

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

This one I dearly love, although I suppose I risk being cliche. I still think it's a lovely poem. From Frost:

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

 

[S-word]

What do you consider to be the best line or two of poetry (as opposed to poem) ever written?

In my view the last two lines of Among School Children by W.B. Yeats are supreme

In reference to wine, from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

Why, be this juice the growth of God, who dare
Blaspheme the twisted tendril as a snare?
A blessing we should use it, should we not?
And if a curse--why, then, who set it there?

 

[Caladan]

Maybe there’s no haven in this world for tender age
My heart beat like the wings of wild birds in a cage
My greatest hope my greatest cause to grieve
And my heart flew from its cage and it bled upon my sleeve
The cries of passion were like wounds that needed healing
I couldn’t hear them for the thunder

~From Prince of Darkness by Indigo girls

 

[idea]

A noiseless patient spider,
I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere,
O my soul.

- Walt Whitman [SIZE=-1](1819–1892).[/SIZE] Leaves of Grass. [SIZE=-1]1900.[/SIZE]

 

[stacey bo bacey]

This one I dearly love, although I suppose I risk being cliche. I still think it's a lovely poem. From Frost:

Oh well, I guess I am cliche, too!

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.

"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost

And...

I shall never get you put together entirely,
Pieced, glued, and properly jointed.
Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles
Proceed from your great lips.
It's worse than a barnyard.

"The Colossus" by Sylvia Plath

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Oh, squiggly line in my eye fluid, I see you there,
Lurking on the periphery of my vision.
But when I try to look at you, you scurry away.
Are you shy, squiggly line?
Why only when I ignore you
do you return to the center of my eye?
Oh, squiggly line, it's all right.
You are forgiven.

- stewie griffin

 

[J Bryson]

Mine is also in my signature, from "Dooley Is A Traitor".

 

[Trey of Diamonds]

Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

The Charge of the Light Brigade ~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson

 

[3.14]

roses are red
violets are blue
.................
................

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

- Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

 

[Falvlun]

Oh, squiggly line in my eye fluid, I see you there,
Lurking on the periphery of my vision.
But when I try to look at you, you scurry away.
Are you shy, squiggly line?
Why only when I ignore you
do you return to the center of my eye?
Oh, squiggly line, it's all right.
You are forgiven.

- stewie griffin

A classic.

 

[Dezzie]

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

Annabel Lee - Edgar Allan Poe

 

[Dezzie]

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

Alone - Edgar Allan Poe

If you can't tell... I like Poe. His stories and poems are great.

 

[Dezzie]

All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

A Dream Within A Dream - POE

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

One of the more powerful poems I've come across, all packed into four lines:

Thanksgiving for a National Victory, by Robert Burns

Ye hypocrites! are these your pranks?
To murder men and give God thanks!
Desist, for shame!-proceed no further;
God won't accept your thanks for Murther!

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

This bit of Ash Wednesday by T.S. Eliot resonates with me:

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

 

[DarkSun]

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

Alone - Edgar Allan Poe

If you can't tell... I like Poe. His stories and poems are great.

I love that poem so much...