[ArcaneAnna]

"A thought once uttered is untrue."

[I had a cat once]

"I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent....

...With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours mean years, mean life. And my lament...

....I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me"

By Gerard Manly Hopkins, still underated and unappreciated in my opinion.

[ForgettingWhatsername]

(Original post by hollyhollywood92)
Yes!

p.s. You are awesome because Bambi, Daria and Allen Ginsberg.

Thanks! +rep for finding the same things awesome

[lilliehear]

A Smugglers Song, Rudyard Kipling. Memories of sitting in bed reading this out of a massive poetry anthology when I was a kid,
I love how the rhythm of it sounds like horse's feet as well!

If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse's feet,
Don't go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street.
Them that ask no questions isn't told a lie.
Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!

[MrFlash1994]

My old man's a white old man
And my old mother's black.
If ever I cursed my white old man
I take my curses back.
If ever I cursed my black old mother
And wished she were in hell,
I'm sorry for that evil wish
And now I wish her well
My old man died in a fine big house.
My ma died in a shack.
I wonder were I'm going to die,
Being neither white nor black?

Cross by Langston Hughes, simple but really quite moving.

[Simone.xox]

It's from a novel but Plath is a poet

“If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

[Kallisto]

I have read a quote from Arthur Schopenhauer, a German author, some days ago:
"A natural mind can almost substitute every degree of education, but no education cannot substitute a natural mind".

I hope this translation was correct.

[katetaylor]

Therefore the love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.
- The Definition of Love, Andrew Marvell.

So cute.

[OnlyMe!]

So many!

A few that come to mind:

"With all its shams, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy." (Desiderata)

And a few from Pablo Neruda:

"Someday, somewhere - anywhere, unfailingly, you'll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life."

"Love is so short, forgetting is so long."

"I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving..."

[Kallisto]

I have a new favorite character with a new favorite quote:

"I am the Spirit that denies!
And rightly too; for all that doth begin
Should rightly to destruction run;
'Twere better then that nothing were begun.
Thus everything that you call Sin,
Destruction - in a word, as Evil represent-
That is my own, real element."

That is from Mephisto, the Satan in Goethes work "Faust".

[PurpleEyes]

"The comets
Have such a space to cross,
Such coldness, forgetfulness.
So your gestures flake off -
Warm and human, then their pink light
Bleeding and peeling
Through the black amnesias of heaven." - The Night Dances by Sylvia Plath

[MindlessRambling]

'The wine of life is spilt upon the sand,
My heart is as some famine-murdered land,
Whence all good things have perished utterly,'
E Tenebris by Oscar Wilde.

[.Scout.]

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
-Eloisa to Abelard - Alexander Pope

Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.
Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet.
Age: five thousand three hundred days.
Profession: none, or "starlet"

Where are you hiding, Dolores Haze?
Why are you hiding, darling?
(I Talk in a daze, I walk in a maze
I cannot get out, said the starling).
-Humber's 'Wanted' Poem - Lolita by Nabokov.

[LizVeronikaTurne]

Easily "They **** you up your Mum and Dad"It's so full of emotion, and sets the tone for one of the best poems ever written... This Be the Verse- Philip Larkin

[PlunderingDesire]

There are so many, but these two stanzas from 'The Garden of Proserpine' by Algernon Charles Swinburne are definitely up there:

"We are not sure of sorrow,
And joy was never sure;
To-day will die to-morrow;
Time stoops to no man's lure;
And love, grown faint and fretful,
With lips but half regretful
Sighs, and with eyes forgetful
Weeps that no loves endure.

From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea"

That second stanza, and in particular the last few lines, makes me tear up every time.

Oh, and also...

"Let us go then, you and I
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table"

TS Eliot- 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'

Some other fantastic ones in this thread as well- I remember many with fondness from the last few years studying them, which is a good job really considering I'm doing an English degree.

[paleophelia]

"Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but just Ourselves—
And Immortality."

Emily Dickinson.

[aspirinpharmacist]

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself-DH Lawrence

If you can force your nerves and bone and sinew,
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And hold on, until there is nothing in them,
Except the will that says to them "Hold on"-Rudyard Kipling

[desdemonata]

"Tanto dolor se agrupa en mi costado
que por doler me duele hasta el aliento.
[...]
No hay extensión más grande que mi herida,
lloro mi desventura y sus conjuntos
y siento más tu muerte que mi vida."
Elegía, by Miguel Hernández

I would translate but I feel it ruins it I also think the entirety of the poem No te rindas by Mario Benedetti is beautiful.

[LookIt'sPete]

if you can meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two imposters just the same

[TheEssence]

Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

John Donne : Holy Sonnet 14