I love these threads. I always read something I’ve never read before.
The Sullivan Ballou letter made me sob.
This first bit of poetry is something I wrote myself when someone I loved very much broke my heart. I don’t know if it’s any good, but it always makes me cry:
From Tenderness, by Stephen Dunn:
From To a Sad Daughter by Michael Ondaatje:
From Bill’s Story by Mark Doty (about his sister’s death):
Also by Mark Doty, from Heaven:
Those are just a few. 
My father was a self educated man and he always loved poetry. Instead of nursery rhymes he would read me classic poetry when I was a small child and one of his favorites was Rudyard Kipling’s If and he would, and now I do, tear up at at the final lines every time.
*If you can talk with crouds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings and not lose the common touch.
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much.
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And - which is more - you’ll be a Man, my son!
I’ve always liked this passage from Thoreau:
And, it’s hard NOT to get choked up with this poem, after all it is titled Funeral (by W.H. Auden).
Though I’ve beaten you and flayed you
By the livin Gawd that made you
You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.
-Gunga Din, Kipling
Every silver lining has a touch of grey.
-Garcia
I know this is a bit hackneyed, but it is a classic “lump bringer”:
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night - Dylan Thomas
*Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
and learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.*
OK, the Herbert, Muir and Mayakovsky were all new to me and most excellent. Thank you.
stargazer: didyaknow that Eliot stole (er, paid homage to) the “All will be well” lines from Julian of Norwich? I learned that right here on the SDMB a while back.
Here’s one more:
But soft! sink low!
Soft! Let me just murmur,
And do you wait a moment you husky-nois’d sea,
For somewhere I believe I heard my mate responding to me,
So faint, I must be still, be still to listen,
But not altogether still for then she might not come immediately to me.
Hither my love!
Here I am! here!
With this just sustained note I announce myself to you,
This gentle call is for you my love, for you,
Do not be decoy’d elsewhere,
That is the whistle of the wind, it is not my voice,
That is the fluttering, the fluttering of the spray,
Those are the shadows of leaves.
O darkness! O in vain!
I am very sick and sorrowful.
O brown halo in the sky near the moon, drooping upon the sea!
O troubled reflection in the sea!
O throat! O throbbing heart!
And I singing uselessly, uselessly, all the night.
O past! O happy life! O songs of joy!
In the air, in the woods, over fields,
Loved! loved! loved! loved! loved!
But my mate no more, no more with me!
We two together no more.
–Walt Whitman
Okay, just so we don’t forget that prose can be affecting, too…
“All right, then, I’ll go to Hell!”
– Huckleberry Finn
“Farewell sweet earth and northern sky,
for ever blest, since here did lie
and here with lissom limbs did run
beneath the Moon, beneath the Sun, —Luthien Tinuviel,
more fair than mortal tongue can tell.
Though all to ruin fell the world
and were dissolved and backward hurled
unmade into the old abyss,
yet were its making good, for this—
the dusk, the dawn, the earth, the sea—
that Luthien for a time should be.”
From The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Yeah, I think I knew that, but it’s the “a condition of complete simplicity (costing not less than everything)” that does it to me. I think that’s about the perfectest description of Christianity I’ve ever seen. I read that and went “…yeah. That’s it.”
A secondary question for y’all: Do you find yourself choking up more at things that give you joy/are happy or things that upset you/are sad? And this isn’t limited to poetry – I’m talking plays, movies, books, TV, stories other people tell you, commercials (I told you I tear up easily!), whatever.
Okay, I’m a goofball. The St. Crispin’s Day Speech (from our good buddy Willy) has always brought a little lump to my throat. And watching Kenneth Branaugh say it was just a wee bit overwhelming. So… Henry V, Act 4, scene 3…
What’s he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin:
If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
HelloKitty: Do you know the source for that passage from Thoreau? I’m a bit of a Thoreauvian, but I don’t recognize it offhand…
As for me, beautiful or happy things make me cry. I sniffled all the way through Annie Dillard’s “Pilgram at Tinker Creek”
One poem that always does it for me is Gary Snyder’s “For the Children”:
FOR THE CHILDREN
The rising hills, the slopes
of statistics
lie before us.
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.
In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.
To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:
stay together
learn the flowers
go light
Oh yeah. The coolest, bravest line in literature for my money.
Somebody else (stargazer, I think) quoted “God’s Grandeur” by Hopkins. Here is a page with some of Hopkins’ other best works; since this is a thread about favorite lines, though, I’ll single out some of the bits that get me:
“He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change; praise him.”
“O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.”
“I caught this morning morning’s minion, kingdom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding high there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing…” and, oh, all the rest of “The Windhover.” I lied; I can’t pick favorites. I love Hopkins.
In a poetry thread here a while back somebody brought this poem by Michael Ondaatje to my attention. Parent/child stuff doesn’t usually get to me, but this…“When I thought of daughters / I wasn’t expecting this / but I like this more.”
…and I believe in that same thread I quoted Seamus Heaney’s “Mid-Term Break.” The last two lines pack a serious punch - I’d quote them here, but it’d spoil the poem to read them out of context. Just go read it, okay?
What Do I Remember Of The Evacuation
by Joy Kogawa
What do I remember of the evacuation?
I remember my father telling Tim and me
About the mountains and the train
And the excitment of going on a trip.
What do I remember of the evacuation?
I remember my mother wrapping
A blanket around me and my
Pretending to fall asleep so she would be happy
Although I was so excited I couldn’t sleep
(I hear there were people herded
Into the Hastings Park like cattle.
Families were made to move in two hours
Abandoning everything, leaving pets
And possessions at gun point.
I hear families were broken up
Men were forced to work. I heard
It whispered late at night
That there was suffering) and
I missed my dolls.
What do I remember of the evacuation?
I remember Miss Foster and Miss Tucker
Who still live in Vancouver
And who did what they could
And loved the children and who gave me
A puzzle to play with on the train.
And I remember the mountains and I was
Six years old and I swear I saw a giant
Gulliver of Gulliver’s Travels scanning the horizon
And when I told my mother she believed it too
And I remember how careful my parents were
Not to bruise us with bitterness
And I remember the puzzle of Lorraine Life
Who said “Don’t insult me” when I
Proudly wrote my name in Japanese
And Tim flew the Union Jack
When the war was over but Lorraine
And her friends spat on us anyway
and I prayed to the God who loves
All the children in his sight
That I might be white.
My Brother Dying
By Raymond Souster
As he looks up at us
With his fear-glazed eyes,
Does he picture us buzzards
Circling round his bed,
Waiting patiently,
For his death and his bones?
No: just his mother, his brother,
Who could do nothing for him
When he sat with the living,
And can do nothing now
As he crawls towards death.
I miss my big brother.
I’ve got three. One of the Crispin’s Day speech that bobkitty quoted on the previous page.
The next is the last couplet from Shakespeare’s 121st sonnet:
And the last and most moving is Shakespeare’s 94th sonnet, which I’ll quote in its entirety:
It occurs to me that some folks may need some background for Joy Kogawa’s “What I Remember About The Evacuation.”
Robert Frost
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
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.
Once while watching the snow come down in my back yard this past winter the lines,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
kept repeating in my mind until tears came. I can’t explain it, I have not thought of this poem since grade school.
This passage might not be relevant to anyone who hasn’t read Timothy Findlay’s WWI novel The Wars, but for me it’s one of the most affecting endings in all of literature:
The archivist closes her book. She stares into time with her hair falling forward either side of her face. Her fingers smooth the cover of the book which is hard and brown and old. She purses her lips. She rises. It is time to tell us all to go. Something prevents her–just for a moment. It is the sound of birds beyond the windows, making commotions in the dark. The archivist moves among the tables–turning out lights and smiling–telling us gently “Late. It’s late.” You begin to arrange your research in bundles–letters–photos–telegrams. This is the last thing you see before you put on your overcoat:
Robert and Rowena with Meg: Rowena seated astride the pony–Robert holding her in place. On the back is written: “Look! You can see our breath!” And you can.
From Cyrano de Bergerac:
I for your joy would gladly lay mine own down,
– E’en though you never were to know it, – never!
– If but at times I might – far off and lonely, –
Hear some gay echo of the joy I bought you!
And also from Cyrano: No, my love, I never loved you.
The last four pages of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King make me bawl, but it’s nice to have Gandalf’s condolence:
“I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”
Why did I say “condolence”? I meant “sympathy.”
I am moved by Walt Whitman and even though it’s almost hackneyed, the “road less traveled” stanza by Frost has come to mean a lot to me as I have searched for a way to forgive myself for not doing grad school the easy way.
But here is one that really resonates with me…well, the last stanza does, which is what I will provide:
You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be-
I had a Mother who read to me.
My mom was a reading teacher and I credit her with giving me my intense love of reading. I can recall her reading “Charlotte’s Web” aloud one chapter each evening. That stanza is from “The Reading Mother” by Strickland Gillilan. I want to get this done in calligraphy and give it to my mom.
