Favorite quote from a poem?

Akaran_D · Post by **Akaran_D** » August 7, 2003, 11:51 pm

Anyone have any favs here? Mine is from the master, Dante Alighieri.

I AM THE WAY INTO THE CITY OF WOE.
I AM THE WAY TO A FORSAKEN PEOPLE.
I AM THE WAY INTO ETERNAL SORROW.

SACRED JUSTICE MOVED MY ARCHITECT.
I WAS RAISED HERE BY DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE,
PRIMORDIAL LOVE AND ULTIMATE INTELLECT.

ONLY THOSE ELEMENTS TIME CANNOT WEAR
WERE MADE BEFORE ME, AND BEYOND TIME I STAND.
ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE.

Yeah, I know, strange for a favorite.. anyone have any others?

Moonwynd · Post by **Moonwynd** » August 8, 2003, 12:07 am

I love the dark hours of my being.
My mind depends into them.
There I can find, as in old letters,
The days of my life, already lived,
And held like a legend, and understood.

Then the knowing comes: I can open
To another life that’s wide and timeless.

So I am sometimes like a tree
Rustling over a gravesite
And making real the dream
Of the one its living roots
Embrace:

A dream once lost
Among the sorrows and songs.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Keverian FireCry · Post by **Keverian FireCry** » August 8, 2003, 1:43 am

How did it get so late so soon?
Its night before its afternoon.
December is here before its June.
My goodness how the time has flewn.
How did it get so late so soon?

Jivundus · Post by **Jivundus** » August 8, 2003, 1:45 am

Who hath seduced thee to this foul revolt
From the pure well of Beauty undefiled?
So banish from true wisdom to prefer
Such squalid wit to honourable rhyme?
To write? To scribble? Nonsense and no more?
I will not write upon this argument
To write is human -- not to write divine.

E. A. Poe

Laliana · Post by **Laliana** » August 8, 2003, 2:10 am

Love Sonnet XVII
by Pablo Neruda

I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving
but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

*Posted the whole sonnet~

Pherr the Dorf · Post by **Pherr the Dorf** » August 8, 2003, 2:16 am

Music Master

You that love lovers,
this is your home. Welcome!
In the midst of making form, love
made this form that melts form,
with love for the door,
soul the vestibule.

Watch the dust grains moving
in the light near the window.
their dance is our dance.
We rarely hear the inward music,
but we're all dancing to it nevertheless,
directed by the one who teaches us,
the pure joy of the sun,
our music master.

When I am with you, we stay up all night.
When you're not here, I can't go to sleep.
Praise God for these two insominias!
And the difference between them.
The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.
We are tasting the taste this minute
of eternity. We are pain
and what cures pain, both. We are
the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.

I want to hold you close like a lute,
so we can cry out with loving.
You would rather throw stones at a mirror?
I am your mirror, and here are the stones.
--- Rumi

I put Italics on my favorite line from my favorite poem, Rumi is stunning, no words do him justice

Arborealus · Post by **Arborealus** » August 8, 2003, 4:42 am

somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near;

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose;

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing;

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.

e.e.c.

Acies · Post by **Acies** » August 8, 2003, 6:10 am

The road not taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost

Drolgin Steingrinder · Post by **Drolgin Steingrinder** » August 8, 2003, 7:31 am

Not my favorite poem, but my favorite one in English:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any – lifted from the no
of all nothing – human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

(“i” thank You God for most this amazing,” e. e. cummings)

Nick · Post by **Nick** » August 8, 2003, 8:26 am

My friend Billy had a ten foot willy and he showed it to the girl next door.
She thought it was a snake so she hit it with a rake and now its only 5'4.

/chuckle

Krimson Klaw · Post by **Krimson Klaw** » August 8, 2003, 10:37 am

"And always remember girl we make mistakes,
to make it up I do whatever it take,
I love you like a fat kid love c a k e,
You know my style I say anything to make you smile "

Prose from the infamous fiddy.

Animale · Post by **Animale** » August 8, 2003, 10:48 am

We Wear the Mask

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,?
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)

Arborealus · Post by **Arborealus** » August 8, 2003, 11:34 am

And the winner for the sexiest poem of all times...

i like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine of your body and its bones, and the trembling -firm- smooth ness and which i will
again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes over parting flesh... And eyes big love-crumbs

and possibly i like the thrill
of you under me so quite new

e.e.c.

Skogen · Post by **Skogen** » August 8, 2003, 11:38 am

New York New York it's a hell of a town
The Bronx is up and I'm Brooklyn down
They don't know my name they only know my initials
Building bombs in the attic for elected officials
I quit my job I cut my hair
I cut my boss cause I don't care
You tried to get slick you bust a little chuckle
You're gonna get smacked with my gold finger knuckle
Cause being as fly as me is something you never thought of
You'll be sticking up old ladies with the hand gun or the sawed-off
Like a buffalo soldier I'm broader than Broadway
Keep keepin' on I don't care what they say
I play my stereo loud it disturbs my neighbors
I want to enjoy the fruits of my labor
I am the holder of the 3-pack Bonanza
If you open the book then you will get your hand slapped
I am the keeper of the 3-pack Bonanza
If you ask a question you will get the answer
Her breast I saw I reached I felt
M-O-N.E-Y the belt
I stay at home just like a hermit
I got the jammy but I don't got the permit
Yes you got a boyfriend and his name is Nick
Annabelle you're caught with the shrimpy limp dick
I ride around town cause my ride is fly
I shot a man in Brooklyn *just to watch him die*

Arborealus · Post by **Arborealus** » August 8, 2003, 12:21 pm

This one kills me...read it out loud and it suddenly makes sense...

raise the shade
will youse dearie?
rain
wouldn't that

get yer goat but
we don't care do
we dearie we should
worry about the rain

huh
dearie?
yknow
i'm

sorry for awl the
poor girls that
gets up god
knows when every

day of their
lives
aint you,
oo-oo. dearie

not so
hard dear

you're killing me

Fredonia Coldheart · Post by **Fredonia Coldheart** » August 8, 2003, 12:50 pm

Another Robert Frost fan here ...

Whose woods these are I think I know,
His house is in the village though.
He will not see me stopping here,
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer,
To stop without a farmhouse near,
Between the woods and frozen lake,
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake,
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep,
Of easy wind and downy flake.

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.