15 Splendid Lines in Poetry That Will Make Your Day

Rakshita Upadhyay
4 min readJun 22, 2021

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A great story can sure stay stuck in your head but a few lines of poetry have the power to stay in your heart and soothe your soul for as long as you remember them. Poetry isn’t just a smart combination of words made to rhyme at certain places, rather it is a work of art that says countless things in a single line.

I have been an ardent poetry freak(Okay, not to the greatest extent, but yes!) ever since I started understanding poetry. From Sylvia Plath and Alfred Lord Tennyson to Samuel Coleridge, my heart melted every time I read a beautiful line that made me feel something. I think most of us feel the same about poetry (probably that’s why you are here, or maybe you are a known person who came here at my request. But even if you came here, you probably won’t read it, you will just clap and mind your own business).

For the rest, who are genuine poetry fans, I am writing this article to share 15 of my most favorite lines in poetry that I have read so far-

(You can comment down your favorite ones)

  1. “Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.”

- Leonardo Da Vinci

2. “Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper, That we may record our emptiness.”

-Kahlil Gibran

3. “For men may come and men may go but I go on forever.”

-Alfred Lord Tennyson

4. “You only live twice: Once when you are born and once when you look death in the face”

- Ian Fleming

5. I am not cruel, just truthful — The eye of a little god, four-cornered.

-Sylvia Plath

6. “Love at the lips was touch

As sweet as I could bear

And once that seemed too much

I lived on air.”

-Robert Frost

7. At length did cross an Albatross,

Thorough the fog it came;

As if it had been a Christian soul,

We hailed it in God’s name.

-Samuel Coleridge

8. “I am no longer in love with her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”

-Pablo Neruda

9. “There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:

I love not Man the less, but Nature more,

From these our interviews, in which I steal

From all I may be, or have been before,

To mingle with the Universe, and feel

What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.”

-Lord Byron

10. “The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you

Don’t go back to sleep!

You must ask for what you really want.

Don’t go back to sleep!

People are going back and forth

across the doorsill where the two worlds touch,

The door is round and open

Don’t go back to sleep!”

-Rumi

11. I’m gonna peep in bo’s bodice. lay down darling don’t

be modest let me slip my hand in. ohhh that’s soft

that’s nice that’s not used up. ohhh don’t cry. wet

what’s wet? oh that. heh heh. that’s just the rain

lambie pie. now don’t squirm. let me put my rubber

on. I’m a wolf in a lamb skin trojan. ohh yeah that’s

hard that’s good. now don’t tighten up. open up be-

bop. lift that little butt up. ummm open wider be-bop.

come on. nothing. can. stop me. now. ohhh ahhh.

isn’t that good. my. melancholy be-bop.

-Patti Smith

12. “Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops — at all -

-Emily Dickinson

13. Are you the new person drawn toward me?

To begin with, take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose;

Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?

Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?

Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy’d satisfaction?

-Walt Whitman

14. “Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever — or else swoon to death.”

-John Keats

15. “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?”

-Richard Siken

I hope these lines fill your life with thoughts and beauty just like they filled mine! These are some of my personal favorites and they might change as I read more poetry. Till then, I will savor their sweetness and find more beautiful lines hidden from my view.

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