Angelica's Favorite Poetry or quotes from Books

I was trying to think of something new to put on this web page, and finally it hit me! Why not my favorite literature. After all, I am an English Lit major, and I will soon have my BA. I didn't like poetry for most of my life, but now that I can kind of understand it, I like it a great deal. No one truly does understand it, not even the author. Poetry is weird like that. I wanted to include some of the stuff from Novels I like as well. So, I did. William Blake is my favorite, so I start from there and move on, ending with Beowulf.

The Clod & the Pebble

"Love seeketh not Itself to please,
Not for itself hath any car;
But for another gives it's ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair."
So sang a little Clod of Clay
Trodden with the cattle's feet;
But a Pebble of the brook,
Warbled out these metres meet:
"Love seeketh, only Self to please,
To bind another to its delight;
Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite."

-William Blake

The Sick Rose

O Rose, thou art sick.
The invisible worm
That flies in the night
In the howling storm

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy;
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy

-William Blake

My Pretty Rose Tree

A flower was offered to me;

Such a flower as May never bore,

But I said, "I've a Pretty Rose-tree,"

And I passed the sweet flower o'er.

Then I went to my Pretty Rose-tree,

To tend her by day and by night.

But my rose turned away with jealousy,

And her thorns were my only delight.

-William Blake

Women, Wine, and Snuff

Give me women, wine, and snuff

Until I cry out "hold, enough!"

You may do so sans objection

Till the day of resurrection;

For bless my beard thy aye shall be

My beloved Trinity.

-John Keats

Orinda to Lucasia Parting October 1661 at London

ADIEU dear object of my Love's excess,

And with thee all my hopes of happiness,

With the same fervent and unchanged heart

Which did it's whole self once to thee impart,

(And which though fortune has so sorely bruis'd, [5]

Would suffer more, to be from this excus'd)

I to resign thy dear Converse submit,

Since I can neither keep, nor merit it.

Thou hast too long to me confined been,

Who ruine am without, passion within. [10]

My mind is sunk below thy tenderness,

And my condition does deserve it less;

I'm so entangl'd and so lost a thing

By all the shocks my daily sorrow bring,

That would'st thou for thy old Orinda call [15]

Thou hardly could'st unravel her at all.

And should I thy clear fortunes interline

With the incessant miseries of mine?

No, no, I never lov'd at such a rate

To tye thee to the rigours of my fate, [20]

As from my obligations thou art free,

Sure thou shalt be so from my Injury,

Though every other worthiness I miss,

Yet I'le at least be generous in this.

I'd rather perish without sigh or groan, [25]

Then thou shoul'dst be condemn'd to give me one;

Nay in my soul I rather could allow

Friendship should be a sufferer, then thou;

Go then, since my sad heart has set thee free,

Let all the loads and chains remain on me. [30]

Though I be left the prey of sea and wind,

Thou being happy wilt in that be kind;

Nor shall I my undoing much deplore,

Since thou art safe, whom I must value more.

Oh! mayst thou ever be so, and as free [35]

From all ills else, as from my company,

And may the torments thou hast had from it

Be all that heaven will to thy life permit.

And that they may thy vertue service do,

Mayest thou be able to forgive them too: [40]

But though I must this sharp submission learn,

I cannot yet unwish thy dear concern.

Not one new comfort I expect to see,

I quit my Joy, hope, life, and all but thee;

Nor seek I thence ought that may discompose [45]

That mind where so serene a goodness grows.

I ask no inconvenient kindness now,

To move thy passion, or to cloud thy brow;

And thou wilt satisfie my boldest plea

By some few soft remembrances of me, [50]

Which may present thee with this candid thought,

I meant not all the troubles that I brought.

Own not what Passion rules, and Fate does crush,

But wish thou couldst have don't without a blush,

And that I had been, ere it was too late, [55]

Either more worthy, or more fortunate.

Ah who can love the thing they cannot prize?

But thou mayst pity though thou dost despise.

Yet I should think that pity bought too dear,

If it should cost those precious Eyes a tear. [60]

Oh may no minutes trouble, thee possess,

But to endear the next hours happiness;

And maist thou when thou art from me remov'd,

Be better pleas'd, but never worse belov'd:

Oh pardon me for pow'ring out my woes [65]

In Rhime now, that I dare not do't in Prose.

For I must lose whatever is call'd dear,

And thy assistance all that loss to bear,

And have more cause than ere I had before,

To fear that I shall never see thee more. [70]

-Katherine Phillips

TO MRS. M. A. AT PARTING

1 I Have examin'd and do find,

2 Of all that favour me

3 There's none I grieve to leave behind

4 But only only thee.

5 To part with thee I needs must die,

6 Could parting sep'rate thee and I.

7 But neither Chance nor Complement

8 Did element our Love ;

9 'Twas sacred Sympathy was lent

10 Us from the Quire above.

11 That Friendship Fortune did create,

12 Still fears a wound from Time or Fate.

13 Our chang'd and mingled Souls are grown

14 To such acquaintance now,

15 That if each would resume their own,

16 Alas ! we know not how.

17 We have each other so engrost,

18 That each is in the Union lost.

19 And thus we can no Absence know,

20 Nor shall we be confin'd ;

21 Our active Souls will daily go

22 To learn each others mind.

23 Nay, should we never meet to Sense,

24 Our Souls would hold Intelligence.

25 Inspired with a Flame Divine

26 I scorn to court a stay ;

27 For from that noble Soul of thine

28 I ne're can be away.

29 But I shall weep when thou dost grieve ;

30 Nor can I die whil'st thou dost live.

31 By my own temper I shall guess

32 At thy felicity,

33 And only like my happiness

34 Because it pleaseth thee.

35 Our hearts at any time will tell

36 If thou, or I, be sick, or well.

37 All Honour sure I must pretend,

38 All that is Good or Great ;

39 She that would be Rosania's Friend,

40 Must be at least compleat.

41 If I have any bravery,

42 'Tis cause I have so much of thee.

43 Thy Leiger Soul in me shall lie,

44 And all thy thoughts reveal ;

45 Then back again with mine shall flie,

46 And thence to me shall steal.

47 Thus still to one another tend ;

48 Such is the sacred name of Friend.

49 Thus our twin-Souls in one shall grow,

50 And teach the World new Love,

51 Redeem the Age and Sex, and shew

52 A Flame Fate dares not move :

53 And courting Death to be our friend,

54 Our Lives together too shall end.

10.

55 A Dew shall dwell upon our Tomb

56 Of such a quality,

57 That fighting Armies, thither come,

58 Shall reconciled be.

59 We'll ask no Epitaph, but say

60 ORINDA and ROSANIA.

-Katherine Phillips

Sonnet xli

I, being born a woman and distressed

By all the needs and notions of my kind,

Am urged by your propinquity to find

Your person fair, and feel a certain zest

To bear you body's weight upon my breast:

So subtly is the fume of life designed,

To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,

And leave me once again undone, possessed.

Think not for this, however, the poor treason

Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,

I shall remember you with love, or season

My scorn with pity,--let me make it plain:

I find this frenzy insufficient reason

For conversation when we meet again.

-Edna St. Vincent Millay

He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

"You'll forget. Things are sweeter when they're lost. I know--because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot. And when I got it it turned to dust in my hands."

-F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

You can't have anything, you can't have anything at all. Because desire just cheats you. It's like a sunbeam skipping here and there about a room. It stops and gilds some inconsequential object, and we poor fools try to grasp it--but when we do the sunbeam moves on to something else, and you've got the inconsequential part, but the glitter that made you want it is gone--

-F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

The complexity is too subtle, too varied; the values are changing utterly with each lesion of vitality; it has begun to appear that we can learn nothing from the past with which to face the future--so we cease to be impulsive, convincible men, interested in what is ethically true by fine margins, we substitute rules of conduct for ideas of integrity, we value safety above romance, we become, quite unconsciously, pragmatic.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

I reached maturity under the impression that I was gathering the experience to order my life for happiness. Indeed, I accomplished the not unusual feat of solving each question in my mind long before it presented itself to me in life--and of being beaten and bewildered just the same.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

A man is just a woman's strategy for making other women.

-Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

It can't last forever. Others have thought such things, in bad times before this, and they were always right, they did get out one way or another, and it didn't last forever. Although for them it may have lasted all the forever they had.

-Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

You can't help what you feel, Moira once said, but you can help how you behave.

-Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

Thyself not free, but to thyself enthrall'd

-John Milton, Paradise Lost

Spite then with spite is best repaid

-John Milton, Paradise Lost

Fruitless to me, though Fruit be here to excess

-John Milton, Paradise Lost

Woe is to him who in terrible trouble must thrust his soul into the fire's embrace.

-Beowulf

Men do not know where hell-demons direct their footsteps.

-Beowulf

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