We asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to share their favorite line of poetry with us in honor of National Poetry Month. Here are some of their responses.
2. From "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop:
"It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master,
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster."
Suggested by Nekesa M., via Facebook
3. From "Leaves of Grass" by Walt Whitman:
"I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles."
Suggested by Amanda B., via Facebook
4. From "Little Red Cap" by Carol Ann Duffy:
"Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head
Warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood
But then I was young."
Suggested by gemsowerby
5. From "Variations on the Word Sleep" by Margaret Atwood:
"I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
and that necessary."
Suggested by Jacob L., via Facebook
7. From "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver:
"You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves."
Suggested by Megan L., via Facebook
8. From "The Starling" by Amy Lowell:
"I weary for desires never guessed,
For alien passions, strange imaginings,
To be some other person for a day."
Suggested by Ashton R., via Facebook
9. From "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot:
"For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons;
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons."
Suggested by Christine S., via Facebook
10. From "Life is Fine" by Langston Hughes:
"Though you may hear me holler,
And you may see me cry-
I'll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you gonna see me die."
Suggested by Ann H., via Facebook
12. From "Tactics and Strategy" by Mario Benedetti:
"My strategy is that some day
I don't know how, nor with what pretext
That finally you need me."
Suggested by Annie D., via Facebook
13. From "The Wasteland" by T.S. Eliot:
"These fragments I have shored
Against my ruins."
Suggested by Madonna K., via Facebook
14. From "the boys i mean are not refined" by e. e. cummings:
"they speak whatever's on their mind
they do whatever's in their pants
the boys i mean are not refined
they shake the mountains when they dance."
Suggested by Christa P., via Facebook
15. From "To Earthward" by Robert Frost:
"Love at the lips was touch
As sweet as I could bear
And once that seemed too much
I lived on air."
Suggested by amyl42b8a9871
17. From "List of Demands" by Saul Williams:
"I wrote a song for you today when I was sitting in my room,
I jumped up on the bed today and played it on the broom.
I didn't think that it would be a song that you would hear,
But when I played it in my head I made you reappear."
Suggested by Keith H., via Facebook
18. From "Funeral Blues" by W.H. Auden:
"He was my North, my South , my East and my West
My working week and my Sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong."
Suggested by Aline T., via Facebook
19. From "Almost" by Lang Leav:
"But we were a maybe
and never a must
when it should have been us."
Suggested by jeanelles3
20. From "'Cuz He's Black" by Javon Johnson:
"Don't like the
fact that he learned to hide from the cops before he knew
how to read. Angrier that his survival depends more on his ability
to deal with the "authorities" than it does his own literacy."
Suggested by idontevenknoww
22. From "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats:
"The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."
Suggested by Nicole D., via Facebook
23. From "Diving into the Wreck" by Adrienne Rich:
"I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone."
Suggested by charlotteb421dd571b
24. From "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll:
"`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrab"
Suggested by The Robotic Doom Avenger
25. From "Dirge Without Music" by Edna St. Vincent Millay:
"Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned."
Suggested by Sara Rowe
27. From "In Celebration of My Uterus" by Anne Sexton:
"Everyone in me is a bird
I am beating all my wings."
Suggested by emeryr
28. From "Bright Star" by John Keats:
"Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death."
Suggested by Justine VP., via Facebook
29. From "Of Mere Being" by Wallace Stevens:
"The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle down."
Suggested by Laura A., via Facebook
30. From "Suicide's Note" by Langston Hughes:
"The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss."
Suggested by Spencer Althouse
31. From "Be Nobody's Darling" by Alice Walker:
"Be an outcast;
Be pleased to walk alone
(Uncool)
Or line the crowded
River beds
With other impetuous
Fools."
Suggested by TonyaPenn
33. From "Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out" by Richard Siken:
"Dear So-and-So, I'm sorry I couldn't come to your party.
Dear So-and-So, I'm sorry I came to your party
and seduced you
and left you bruised and ruined, you poor sad thing.
You want a better story. Who wouldn't?"
Suggested by idontevenknoww
34. From "Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou:
"You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise."
Suggested by Kalle M., via Facebook
35. From "Holy Sonnet X" by John Dunne:
"DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so."
Suggested by Emily R., via Facebook
36. From "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" by William Wordsworth:
"I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils."
Suggested by Sarah S., via Facebook
38. From "The Waking" by Theodore Roethke:
"I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go."
Suggested by Erica F., via Facebook
39. From "Every Day You Play" by Pablo Neruda:
"I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees."
Suggested by Luiza G., via Facebook
40. From "A Question" by Robert Frost:
"A voice said, Look me in the stars
And tell me truly, men of earth,
If all the soul-and-body scars
Were not too much to pay for birth."
Suggested by Joseph H., via Facebook
41. From "Apology" by William Carlos Williams:
"The beauty of
the terrible faces
of our nonentities
stirs me to it."
Suggested by isabelav3
42. From "Sonnet 116" by William Shakespeare:
"Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shake."
Suggested by Brooke W., via Facebook
44. From "Auguries of Innocence" by William Blake:
"To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
To hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour."
Suggested by Charlotte S., via Facebook
45. From "Oh Yes" by Charles Bukowski:
"there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than
too late."
Suggested by Lelia S., via Facebook
46. From "Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson:
"We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
Suggested by juliaallisonframpton
47. From "'Hope' is the thing with feathers - (314)" by Emily Dickinson:
"Hope is the thing with feathers,
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without words,
And never stops-at all."
Suggested by Belle M., via Facebook
