GRIPPING LINES FROM SOME ENGLISH POEMS

 

GRIPPING LINES FROM SOME ENGLISH POEMS

While I was having a look at some old English poems written by distinguished poets, I realised certain lines were so vigorous that they not only delighted me in  the way good poetry should, but also gripped my heart, mind and soul. So, I decided to share them with the readers of this write up. But before I do so, let us read some definitions of poetry.

a)      Poetry is the criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty. (Matthew Arnold).

b)       Poetry is the identity of all other knowledges; the blossom and fragrance of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language.” (S.T.Coleridge).

c)      Poetry does not become intimate to us through the intellect alone, it comes to us through temperament, one might almost say, enters us through the pores of the skins.”

            The lines which I picked up from a handful of poems  read as follows:

1.A thing of beauty is a joy for ever

Its loveliness increases, it will never

Pass into nothingness;  but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dream, and health, and quiet breathing. (John Keats, 1795-1821, Endymion).

 

2. We look before and after,

And pine for what is not:

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought (P.B.Shelley, 1792-1822, To A Sky Lark).

            3. The sea of faith

             Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore

             Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled;

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating to the breath

Of the night-wind down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

 

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So  various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night. (Matthew Arnold, 1822-88, Dover Beach).

 

4. The world is too much with us; late and soon,

 Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We Have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this,  for everything, we are out of tune,

It moves us not,--Great God! I’d rather be

A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. (William Wordsworth, 1750-1830, The World Is Too Much With Us; Late Or Soon).  

 

5.When the voices of children are heard on the green

And laughing is heard on the hill,

And heart is at rest within my breast

And everything else is still.

 

“Then come home, my children,  the sun is gone down

And the dews of night arise;

Come, come, leave off play, and let us away

Till  the morning appears in the skies.”

      

             “No, no, let us play, for its yet day

            And we cannot go to sleep;

            Besides, in the sky the little birds fly

            And the hills are all covered with sheep.”

 

            “Well, well, go and play till the light fades away

            And then go home to bed.”

The little ones leaped and shouted and laughed

And all the hills echoed. (William Blake, 1757-1827, Nurse’s Song).

 

6. He prayeth best , who loveth best

            All things both great and small;

            For the dear God who loveth us,

He made and loveth all. (S.T.Coleridge, 1772-1834,The Rime of Ancient Mariner).

 

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9^th May 2021                                                               G. R. Kanwal