I haven’t seen the film, but the line is familiar from the old tune “Nature Boy” (is this used in the film?).
Owen’s “The Parable of the Old Man and the Young” always gets me:
…
*Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an Angel called him out of heaven;
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him, thy son.
Behold! Caught in a thicket by its horns,
A Ram. Offer the Ram of Pride instead.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one. *
This may not count, because it’s non-fiction, but the book Hell, Healing, and Resistance, by Daniel Hallock, has a passage concerning Claude Eatherly, the man who selected the site of Hiroshima as the target for the A-bomb. Eatherly was consumed by guilt in the years after the war, and the book’s passage ends with Eatherly’s obituary. In the last line of the obituary, his brother was quoted as saying Eatherly never stopped having nightmares about what he had done. “He said he could feel those people burning.”
That always gets me, too… 
Also from Moulin Rouge: “Christian, you may see me only as a drunken, vice-ridden gnome whose friends are just pimps and girls from the brothels. But I know about art and love, if only because I long for it with every fiber of my being.”
“Oh, my dear one, while you’re sleeping
I am leaving ere the dawn;
All my love is in your keeping;
Briefly grieving, carry on.
Though our lives be torn asunder,
We will mend it straight and strong:
Tears at parting, joys at meeting;
Parting briefly, loving long.”
– James Craddock
Honestly, though the lines that get to me the most are from songs and poems that were written for me… and they’re too private to share here.
The River-Merchant’s Wife:
A Letter
While my hair was still cut straight across my
Forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.
At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the look-out?At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-yen, by the river of swirling
Eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.
You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different
mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fu-sa.
-Ezra PoundYes… it is the line from “Nature Boy” and yes… it’s used in the film.
It’s the context that it’s used in in the film that gets me. Not the song tho’.
Toidy Pot, Toidy Pot, in the sky
Flushing poo, from up so high
Don’t look up, don’t even try
Or you’ll get poo, right in your eye!
[sub]hey it brings something to my throat![/sub] :rolleyes:
ndorward, thanks, but the poem im thinking of is a WWI poem, i think. i always think its wilfred owen, but its not. neither is it brooke or sassoon.
if i remember correctly, and i probably dont, the author is writing about two of his brothers who died in the war. one of the lines, to very roughly paraphrase, goes something like this:
and did they know
ten thousand days ago
that they were beautiful?
The last lines of Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by.
And that has made all the difference.
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:
Here he lies where he long’d to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
…Robrt Louis Stevenson, The Requiem
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints!—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
…Elizabeth Barrett Browning, SONNET #43, FROM THE PORTUGUESE
OUT of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
…William Ernest Henley, Invictus
…too may others to post.
These two poems by Robert Hass really affect me, but for different and completely opposite reasons.
I wish I could link to them, but I can’t find any online. The last lines always bring tears to my eyes.
From Field guide:
(to his wife, Leif is his son)
Letter
……It’s you I love.
I have believed so long
in the magic of names and poems.
I hadn’t thought them bodiless
at all. Tall buttercup. Wild Vetch.
“Often I am permitted to return
to a meadow.” It all seemed real to me
last week. Words. You are the body
of my world, root and flower, the
brightness and surprise of birds.
I miss you love. Tell Leif
you’re the names of things.
From * Sun Under Wood*:
Faint Music
….I had the idea that the world’s so full of pain
it must sometimes make a kind of singing.
And that the sequence helps, as much as order helps—
First an ego, and then pain, and then the singing.
There are far too many to name, but recently I’ve been totally devastated by Listen! by Vladimir Mayakovsky:
Listen!
*Listen,
if stars are lit
it means there is someone who needs it.
It means that someone wants them to be,
that someone deems those speckles of spit
Magnificent.
And overwrought,
in the swirls of afternoon dust,
he bursts in on God,
afraid he might be already late.
In tears,
he kisses God’s sinewy hand
and begs him to guarantee
that there will definitely be a star.
He swears
he won’t be able to stand
that starless ordeal.
Later,
he wanders around, worried,
but outwardly calm.
And to someone else, he says:
“Now,
it’s all right.
You are no longer afraid,
Are you?”
Listen,
if the stars are lit
it means there is someone who needs it.
It means it is essential
that every evening
at least one star should ascend
over the crest of the building.*
1914
For more Mayakovsky (in Russian, too!) please see:
When times get tough I always find inspiration in the poem J.A. Goytysolo wrote for his young daughter Julia. I couldn’t find an English translation so I translated the basic meaning if not the beauty of the original in Spanish
Words for Julia
José Agustín Goytisolo
You cannot turn back
because life already pushes you
like a never-ending howl.
My daughter 'tis better to live
with the happiness of mankind
than to cry before the blind wall.
You will feel cornered,
you will feel lost or lonely,
maybe you’ll wish you hadn’t been born.
I know very well they will tell you
that there is no object to life,
that it is an unfortunate affair.
Then always remember
what I wrote one day
thinking of you as I am now thinking.
A man alone, a woman,
Taken like that, one by one,
are like dust, are nothing.
But when I talk to you
when I write these words for you
I also think of other people.
Your destiny is in others,
your future is your own life,
your dignity that of everybody.
Others expect you to hang on,
the help of your happiness,
your song among their songs.
Then always remember
what I wrote one day
thinking of you as I am now thinking.
Never give up or halt
by the road, never say
I can’t take it and here I’ll remain.
Life is beautiful you will see
how in spite of everything
you’ll have love, you’ll have friends.
For the rest there is no choice
and this world as it is
will be all you have.
Forgive me, I do not know
what else to say but understand
I am still on my way.
And always, always, remember
what I wrote one day
thinking of you, like I am now thinking.
There are waaaay too many that stick in my mind for me to pick just one so here goes.
First here is a line from Tennyson that just rrrolls off the tongue:
She only said ‘The night is dreary
he cometh not’, she said.
She said ‘Iam aweary, weary,
I would that I were dead’.
Someone mentioned Edna St Vincent Millay:
“I only know that a summer sang in me once, that in me sings no more.”
One another leve from the movie ‘Chasing Amy’:
“If this isnt love then I dont think I could take the real thing.”
Or one an entirely differnent note:
“Turn off the sun,
pull the stars from the sky,
the more I give to you the more I die.
And I want you.
And I still want you.”
-NiN
This thread is really coo btw.
Magickly Delicious…I couldn’t agree more…I used to listen to that over and over again. Such an amazing letter. Incredible.
So we’ll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And Love itself have rest.
Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we’ll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.
- Lord Byron
I became aware of this poem shortly after a close friend of mine died while we were both in college. Being bikers, we HAD gone roving late into the night together many times…
Tear up, hell. Just reading it made me sob like a baby.
I have always loved these lines from W.H. Auden:
He was my North, my South, My East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest.
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought love would last forever: I was wrong.
(from Twelve Songs, song IX)
The Slip by Wendell Berry
The river takes the land, and leaves nothing.
Where the great slip gave way in the bank
and an acre disappeared, all human plans
dissolve. An aweful clarification occurs
where a place was. Its memory breaks
from what is known now, and begins to drift.
Where cattle grazed and trees stood, emptiness
widens the air for birdflight, wind, and rain.
As before the beginning, nothing is there.
Human wrong is in the cause, human
ruin the effect - but no matter;
all will be lost, no matter the reason.
Nothing, having arrived, will stay.
The earth, even, is like a flower, so soon
passeth it away. And yet this nothing
is the seed of all - heaven’s clear
eye, where all worlds appear.
Where the imperfect has departed, the perfect
begins its struggle to return. The good gift
begins again its descent. The maker moves
in the unmade, stirring the water until
it clouds, dark beneath the surface,
stirring and darkening the soul until pain
perceives new possibility. There is nothing
to do but learn and wait, return to work
on what remains. Seed will sprout in the scar.
Though death is in the healing, it will heal.
. . . Come, my friends,
Push off and sitting well in order
Smite the sounding furrows.
For my purpose holds to sail
Beyond the sunset and the baths
Of all the western stars until I die.
these are just a few poems… and I’m not even getting into the songs, let alone the hymns! (all right, I tear up easily… my mom’s the same way, and it used to embarass me to no end. And now, here I am, and it’ll probably embarass my kids!)
He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with the golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams beneath your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams…
William Butler Yeats
Crossing the Bar
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound or foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell;
When I embark;
For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
God’s Grandeur
THE world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs –
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
…A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
from Little Gidding by T.S. Eliot
i found it! its by edwin muir.
The Brothers
The Brothers
Last night I watched my brothers play,
The gentle and the reckless one,
In a field two yards away.
For half a century they were gone
Beyond the other side of care
To be among the peaceful dead.
Even in a dream how could I dare
Interrogate that happiness
So wildly spent yet never less?
For still they raced about the green
And were like two revolving suns;
A brightness poured from head to head,
So strong I could not see their eyes
Or look into their paradise.
What were they doing, the happy ones?
Yet where I was they once had been.
I thought, How could I be so dull,
Twenty thousand days ago,
Not to see they were beautiful?
I asked them, Were you really so
As you are now, that other day?
And the dream was soon away.
For then we played for victory
And not to make each other glad.
A darkness covered every head,
Frowns twisted the original face,
And through that mask we could not see
The beauty and the buried grace.
I have observed in foolish awe
The dateless mid-days of the law
And seen indifferent justice done
By everyone on everyone.
And in a vision I have seen
My brothers playing on the green.
Oh, absolutely – I was going to post that one if nobody else had.
This couplet in particular always gets to me…
Here’s another one I find profoundly affecting, because I can really relate to the sentiment expressed therein…
Denial
George Herbert
When my devotions could not pierce
Thy silent ears,
Then was my heart broken, as my verse;
My breast was full of fears
And disorder;
My bent thoughts, like a brittle bow,
Did fly asunder:
Each took his way; some would to pleasures go,
Some to the wars and thunder
Of alarms.
As good go anywhere, they say,
As to benumb
Both knees and heart in crying night and day,
Come, come, my God, O come!
But no hearing.
O that thou shouldst give dust a tongue
To cry to thee,
And then not hear it crying! All day long
My heart was in my knee,
But no hearing.
Therefore my soul lay out of sight,
Untuned, unstrung;
My feeble spirit, unable to look right,
Like a nipped blossom, hung
Discontented.
O cheer and tune my heartless breast;
Defer no time,
That so thy favors granting my request,
They and my mind may chime,
And mend my rhyme.