BEST LINES OF POETRY

I know I'm not the only pleb on here needing to be spoonfed lines of poetry in order to like the whole poem and discover further material.
So: Post your favorite lines of poetry ITT. Let's become patrician through an entry level circlejerk, friends.

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

Every Night and every Morn
Some to Misery are Born.
Every Morn and every Night
Some are Born to sweet delight.
Some are Born to sweet delight,
Some are Born to Endless Night.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Si je désire une eau d'Europe, c'est la flache
Noire et froide où vers le crépuscule embaumé
Un enfant accroupi plein de tristesse, lâche
Un bateau frêle comme un papillon de mai.

Let's talk of dust, of worms and epitaphs
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth
Let's choose executors and talk of wills
And yet not so..

To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

And wipe the tears forever from his eyes...

For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue.

That did excell
The rest so far as Cynthia doth shend The lesser starres

But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold
Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem
The cone of night

For I love you so,
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.

“O, I have looked at, often looked at
Sweet, sublime,
Sore things, shudderful, night and noon
In my time.”

With them the Seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with my own hand labour’d it to grow:
And this was all the Harvest that I reap’d—
“I came like Water, and like Wind I go.”

Oh tarnish late on Wenlock Edge,
Gold that I never see;
Lie long, high snowdrifts in the hedge
That will not shower on me.

My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor

And if you ask how I regret that parting?
It is like the flowers falling at spring’s end,
confused, whirled in a tangle.
What is the use of talking! And there is no end of talking—
There is no end of things in the heart

Vi levande spikar nedhamrade i samhället!
En dag skall vi lossna från allt.
Vi skall känna dödens luft under vingarna
och bli mildare och vildare än här.

Cuánto mejor sería, corazón,
que te agotaras, trágico y canoro,
en este amor vernal de fuego y oro,
en una fervorosa combustión.

- Gilberto Owen

Five years have past; five summers with
the length
Of five long winters!

- William Wordsworth

The predecessor to Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening:

>First Spirit
Come away, come away, Hecate, Hecate-
O come away.
>Hecate
I come, I come, I come, I come,
With all the speed I may,
With all the speed I may.
Where's Stadling?
>Second Spirit
Here-
And Hopper too, and Hellway too;
We lack but you, we lack but you:
Come away, make up the count.
>Hecate
I will but 'noint, and then I mount,
I will but 'noint, and then I mount.

It blows my mind most bitterly
For the them to think death's honesty
Won't fall upon them naturally

T. S. Eliot

Harvard and English mist;
the sick Christian;
the American tourist
with an interest in monasteries
rather than castles:
in shrines for aging knees;
a zeal for poetry without zest,
without marrow juices;
at best, a single hair
from the beard of Dostoievsky.

Irving Layton

Could you care to post a translation?

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

Tennyson

All day within the dreamy house,
The doors upon their hinges creak'd;
The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse
Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd,
Or from the crevice peer'd about.
Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors
Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices called her from without.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.

A poesia está guardada nas palavras - é tudo que eu sei.
Meu fado é o de não saber quase tudo.
Sobre o nada eu tenho profundidades.
Não tenho conexões com a realidade.
Poderoso para mim não é aquele que descobre ouro.
Para mim poderoso é aquele que descobre as insignificâncias (do mundo e as nossas).
Por essa pequena sentença me elogiaram de imbecil.
Fiquei emocionado.
Sou fraco para elogios.

Fulton's translation:

We living nails hammered down in society!
One day we shall loosen from everything.
We shall feel death’s air under our wings
and become milder and wilder than we ever were.

The last line is a non-literal translation; "än här" literally means "than here".

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

>tfw total poetry pleb who's only read epic poetry and one or two poems about ancient civilizations

Then out spake brave Horatius,
the captain of the gate,
'to every man upon this earth
death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
than facing fearful odds,
for the ashes of his fathers
and the temples of his gods?'

A thread free of shit-posting, what bliss

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

>A 2016 analysis by Factiva showed that lines from the poem have been quoted more often in the first seven months of 2016 than in any of the preceding 30 years. This includes mentions by commentators and journalists in news sources, but also in Twitter posts.

I wonder why

Into my heart an air that kills,
From yon far country blows,
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

It is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain.
Those happy highways where I went,
And cannot come again.

"30 days has September" is objectively the best poem. There is no more useful and memorable poem.

>"30 days has September" is objectively the best poem.
Said the subject.

No longer in Lethean foliage caught
Begin the preparation for your death
And from the fortieth winter by that thought
Test every work of intellect or faith,
And everything that your own hands have wrought
And call those works extravagance of breath
That are not suited for such men as come
proud, open-eyed and laughing to the tomb.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

Achilles came to Troyland
And I to Chersonese:
He turned from wrath to battle,
And I from three days' peace.

Was it so hard, Achilles,
So very hard to die?
Thou knewest and I know not—
So much the happier I.

I will go back this morning
From Imbros over the sea;
Stand in the trench, Achilles,
Flame-capped, and shout for me.

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new

Not less because in purple I descended
The western day through what you called
The loneliest air, not less was I myself.

What was the ointment sprinkled on my beard?
What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears?
What was the sea whose tide swept through me there?

Out of my mind the golden ointment rained,
And my ears made the blowing hymns they heard.
I was myself the compass of that sea:

I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;

That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,

I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar-stairs
That slope thro' darkness up to God,

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.

"So careful of the type?" but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, "A thousand types are gone:
I care for nothing, all shall go.
"Thou makest thine appeal to me:
I bring to life, I bring to death:
The spirit does but mean the breath:
I know no more." And he, shall he,
Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,

Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law—
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed—

Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal'd within the iron hills?

No more? A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match'd with him.

O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil.

praise Gnon

How long, how long, in infinite Pursuit
Of This and That endeavour and dispute?
Better be merry with the fruitful Grape
Than sadden after none, or bitter, Fruit.

>mfw

Dead Man was the film that inspired me to read more of William Blake's works, and, in turn, poetry and literature in general. One of the best movies that changed my life.

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?

So they sailed away for a year and a day
to the land where the bong tree grows