SOME FAMOUS LINES OF GREAT POETS

 

                   SOME FAMOUS LINES OF GREAT POETS  

There is a lot of wisdom in the famous lines of great poets. It is worthwhile to remember them, to act on them and to quote them.

They are the essence of what such poets felt and versified .  To mention all of them in one installment is impossible. Here is a handful of them on this page.  More in days to come.

1. In small proportions we just beauties see; and in short measures life may perfect be. --- Ben Jonson (1572-1637).

2. They also serve who only stand and wait. –John Milton (1608-1674).

3. There is a comfort in the strength of love; it will make a thing endurable, which else would overset the brain, or break the heart.---William Wordsworth (1770-1830).

4. Breathes there the man with soul so dead, who never to himself hath said; ‘This is my own, my native land!’----Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832).

5. Not gold, but only men can make a people great and strong—men who, for truth and honour’s sake, stand fast and suffer long.---Ralph Waldo Emerson. (1803-1882).

6. What is this life, if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.---William  Henry Davies (1871-1940).

7. Remember, no men are strange, no countries foreign, beneath all uniforms, a single body breathes like ours; the land our brothers walk upon is earth like this, in which we all shall lie. James Harold Kirkup (1918-2009).

8. Obey thy parents.---William Shakespeare (1564-1616) in King Lear, Act 3.

9. Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate, All but the page prescribed, their present state. ---Alexander Pope (1688-1744 ).

10. If all the pens that ever poets held, had fed the feeling of their masters thoughts, and every sweetness that inspired their hearts, their minds, and muses on admired themes: if all the heavenly quintessence they still from their immortal flowers of poesy, wherein as in a mirror we perceive the highest reaches of human wit—if these had made one poem’s period all combined in beauty’s worthiness, yet should there hover in their restless heads, one thought, one grace, one wonder at the least which into words no virtue can digest. ---Christopher Marlowe (1564-93)

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G.R.Kanwal

24 March 2025