The last phrase of Poe’s “To One in Paradise”:
*…And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy grey eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams—
In what ethereal dances,
By what eternal streams. *
I just have to say, these verse threads are some of my favourites on these boards over the years.
Here’s another:
“When the bells jostle in the tower,
The hollow night amid –
Then on my tongue, the taste is sour
Of all I ever did.”*
- A.E. Housman
I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the number of responses, and the variance of them. You can really see how the verse can impact people, and how the sharing of verse can evoke emotion. There are some wonderful lines here, hope to see more.
Terrific idea for thread. Well done.
Shelley’s “Ozymandias” has been mentioned a couple of times, for which I am grateful, so I’ll have to offer Yeats’s “If”, at the final octet:
CharmaChameleon: Credit for If belongs to Rudyard Kipling.
Since what would have been my first choice (The Second Coming) and second option (Ozymandias) have been mentioned, I’ll contribute this excerpt of Robert Browning’s My Last Duchess:
If by titans you mean eighteenth-century English poets, I always thought they read too much like a technical manual. Give me the Romantics any day.
Not to mention that this thread isn’t about what we feel are the most significant poems but the ones that are our favorites.
The first one I quoted I read in a book about astronomy as a child and it inspired a sense of awe that science can provide. It influenced my life and I love it.
My absolute all-time favorite is Nesace’s speech from E.A. Poe’s Al Aaraaf.
I love it because Nesace is speaking directly to the Ineffable, without need of an intercessor; and because it’s pretty much exactly what I would say:
Spirit! that dwellest where,
In the deep sky,
The terrible and fair,
In beauty vie!
Beyond the line of blue-
The boundary of the star
Which turneth at the view
Of thy barrier and thy bar-
Of the barrier overgone
By the comets who were cast
From their pride and from their throne
To be drudges till the last-
To be carriers of fire
(The red fire of their heart)
With speed that may not tire
And with pain that shall not part-
Who livest- that we know-
In Eternity- we feel-
But the shadow of whose brow
What spirit shall reveal?
Tho’ the beings whom thy Nesace,
Thy messenger hath known
Have dream’d for thy Infinity
A model of their own-
Thy will is done, O God!
The star hath ridden high
Thro’ many a tempest, but she rode
Beneath thy burning eye;
And here, in thought, to thee-
In thought that can alone
Ascend thy empire and so be
A partner of thy throne-
By winged Fantasy,
My embassy is given,
Till secrecy shall knowledge be
In the environs of Heaven.’
I remember My Last Duchess from my junior year in high school. I had to do a presentation on it, and discovered the woman being spoken of was Lucrezia Borgia. When I mentioned her father was Rodrigo Borgia, who became Pope Alexander VI, one fellow student, who was more innocent than I was, asked how he could be pope and have kids. I replied “Just like any other man I guess.”
I love this one too. It’s been a long time since I read the poem, need to get it out again.
Looking over the favorite passages quoted here, I notice something. Though from every quarter and walk of life, on every theme – from bicycles to Kubla Khan – the passages people chose to single out all seem to flow with especial grace. They are the kind of passages where every choice of word seems perfect and no substitute would do; they flow like incantations or timeless aphorisms, and impart a sense of the numenous to each sentiment.
Sternvogel: I find this choice very interesting, because I’m a person who can be very happy with small things and everyday joys. Do you think, as Browning seems to impliy, that there is something offputting about this quality? Or is it just that the lady in question lacked a sense of perspective or proportion?
It’s obvious you’ve never Kipled. 
Some more good Kipling - “Recessional,” written for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897:
*God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle line,
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
The tumult and the shouting dies;
The Captains and the Kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
Far-called our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding calls not Thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word-
Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!*
Two sonnets from Edwin Arlington Robinson:
*Credo
I cannot find my way: there is no star
In all the shrouded heavens anywhere;
And there is not a whisper in the air
Of any living voice but one so far
That I can hear it only as a bar
Of lost, imperial music, played when fair
And angel fingers wove, and unaware,
Dead leaves to garlands where no roses are.
No, there is not a glimmer, nor a call,
For one that welcomes, welcomes when he fears,
The black and awful chaos of the night;
For through it all–above, beyond it all–
I know the far sent message of the years,
I feel the coming glory of the light.
Dear Friends
Dear Friends, reproach me not for what I do,
Nor counsel me, nor pity me; nor say
That I am wearing half my life away
For bubble-work that only fools pursue.
And if my bubbles be too small for you,
Blow bigger then your own: the games we play
To fill the frittered minutes of a day,
Good glasses are to read the spirit through.
And whoso reads may get him some shrewd skill;
And some unprofitable scorn resign,
To praise the very thing that he deplores;
So, friends (dear friends), remember, if you will,
The shame I win for singing is all mine,
The gold I miss for dreaming is all yours. *
I think this is right. What makes me love a poem, first, is how it sounds. And as you say, the idea that each word is the exact right one, that the poet has somehow found the ineffably perfect words to put next to each other. I think that’s exactly how the sense of the ‘numinous’ is conveyed – almost a feeling that human skill alone cannot have forged this work.
I also tend to find the topic less important, but looking through the selection I’ve made, it’s apparent that my ‘very favorite’ do tend to cluster around ‘big’ themes, in particular the human longing to understand our human condition.
High Flight
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, --and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of --Wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air…
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark or even eagle flew –
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
John Gillespie Magee, Jr
My favorite example of perfect words, cadence, and rhythm is in Poe’s “Annabel Lee”"
The whole poem is like that, but that one line is shining perfection.
Robert Herrick:
Whenas in silks my Julia goes
then, then, methinks.
how sweetly flows
that liquifaction of her clothes.
Gerard Manley Hopkins contrasting nature passing away with humans’ eternal life:
But vastness blurs and time beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,
A heart’s-clarion! Away grief’s gasping, joyless days, dejection.
Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam. Flesh fade, and mortal trash
Fall to the residuary worm; world’s wildfire, leave but ash:
In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond.
“I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am…immortal diamond” is on Mom’s (and eventually my) gravestone.