Tag: fave lines

You know, the last time that I found you,

you were smilin’ something sweet.

You had magic all around you.

You had something to complete.

I think you knew how much you meant, though,

and did just what you came here for.

Some people go out through the window

just to come in the back door.

So lay your burden down.

You don’t need to carry it ‘round no more.

‘Cause in the end all is forgiven,

and our friendship will always remain.

So go ahead, live the life you’re livin’,

and don’t you ever be ashamed.

Just do your best for me,

’cause things will never be the same.

– from “The Gift” by Lucas Revolution

Home they brought her warrior dead:
        She nor swoon’d nor utter’d cry:
All her maidens, watching, said,
        “She must weep or she will die.”

from The Princess by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I dreamt a dream tonight. ‘And so did I.’
Well, what was yours? ‘That dreamers often lie.’
In bed asleep while they do dream things true.
‘Oh, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.’

     Queen Mab, what’s she?

‘She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate stone
On the forefinger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomi
Over men’s noses as they lie asleep.

Her wagon spokes made of long spinners’ legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
Her traces of the smallest spider’s web,
Her collars of the moonshine’s watery beams,
Her whip of cricket’s bone, the lash of film,
Her wagoner a small gray-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm
Pricked from the lazy finger of a maid.

Her chariot is an empty hazelnut
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers.

And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love;
On courtiers’ knees, that dream on curtsies straight;
O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees;
O’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are.

Sometime she gallops o’er a courtier’s nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit.

And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig’s tail
Tickling a parson’s nose as he lies asleep,
Then he dreams of another benefice.

Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five fathom deep, and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two
And sleeps again.

                                   This is that very Mab
That plaits the manes of horses in the night
And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes.
This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage.

This is she—’

Mercutio’s speech about Queen Mab, from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?
 The round squat turret, blind as the fool’s heart,
 Built of brown stone, without a counter-part
In the whole world. The tempest’s mocking elf
Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf
 He strikes on, only when the timbers start.

Not see? because of night perhaps?—Why, day
 Came back again for that! before it left,
 The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:
The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay,
Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,—
 “Now stab and end the creature—to the heft!”

Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it toll’d
 Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears
 Of all the lost adventurers my peers,—
How such a one was strong, and such was bold,
And such was fortunate, yet each of old
 Lost, lost! one moment knell’d the woe of years.

There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met
 To view the last of me, a living frame
 For one more picture! in a sheet of flame
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
 And blew “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.”

from “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came” by Robert Browning

Though I am young, and cannot tell
   Either what Death or Love is well,
Yet I have heard they both bear darts,
   And both do aim at human hearts.
And then again, I have been told
   Love wounds with heat, as Death with cold;
So that I fear they do but bring
   Extremes to touch, and mean one thing.

Ben Johnson

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

Bene-Gesserit Litany Against Fear, Frank Herbert

Are you, are you coming to the tree?
Wear a necklace of rope side by side with me.
Strange things have happened here,
No stranger would it be
If we met at midnight in the hanging tree.

from “The Hanging Tree” by Suzanne Collins

Hush, beating heart of Christabel!
Jesu, Maria, shield her well!
She folded her arms beneath her cloak,
And stole to the other side of the oak.
      What sees she there?

There she sees a damsel bright,
Drest in a silken robe of white,
That shadowy in the moonlight shone:
The neck that made that white robe wan,
Her stately neck, and arms were bare;
Her blue-veined feet unsandl’d were,
And wildly glittered here and there
The gems entangled in her hair.
I guess, ‘twas frightful there to see
A lady so richly clad as she—
Beautiful exceedingly!

Mary mother, save me now!
(Said Christabel) And who art thou?

from “Christabel” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Out of the hills of Habersham,
Down the valleys of Hall,
I hurry amain to reach the plain,
Run the rapid and leap the fall,
Split at the rock and together again,
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide,
And flee from folly on every side
With a lover’s pain to attain the plain
Far from the hills of Habersham,
Far from the valleys of Hall.

from “Song of the Chattahoochee”