Some of the Most Powerful Excerpts From Poetry

Famous Lines From Our Favourite Poets

Many of us have heard or seen famous lines of poetry (even if we are not aware of it). Sometimes it could be in a movie we are watching to illustrate some poignant theme, it could be something you were forced to learn in school or a play, or perhaps stuck on the wall of a person you know.

Either way, these excerpts stick in our minds for a reason because they are powerful and moving. Either they reflect something of ourselves or make us see the world in a different way.

Here are some of my favourites below.

 

1.

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes…

Lord Byron

 

2.

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 that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

W.H. Auden

 

3.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver

 

4.

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.

~ Dylan Thomas

 

5.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d.

~ Shakespeare

 

6.

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

 

7.

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

~ Yeats

 

8.

 

9.

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;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

~ William Wordsworth

 

10.

It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.

~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer

 

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