20 Lines in Poetry That Will Make Your Day

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

image via Unsplash.com by Catherine Kay Greenup

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 wouldn’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 20 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

1. “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

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

-Alfred Lord Tennyson

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

- Ian Fleming

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

-Sylvia Plath

1. “Love at the lips was touch
   As sweet as I could bear
   And once that seemed too much
   I lived on air.”

-Robert Frost

1. 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

1. “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

1. “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

1. “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

1. 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

1. “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

1. 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
2. “Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
   And so live ever — or else swoon to death.”
   -John Keats
3. “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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