10 Great Poetry Lines to Memorize List

There are certain  lines of poetry that come to me--come at me--stay with me...here are just 10 of them.

10  Great Poetry Lines to Memorize

Fair seed-time had my soul, and I grew up

Fostered alike by beauty and by fear; 

                                                          --William Wordsworth from The Prelude

Here's a riddle for Our Age: when the sky's the limit,

how can you tell you've gone too far?

                                                       --Rita Dove, from "And Counting"

What kind of beast would turn its life into words? 

                                                   --Adrienne Rich from "Twenty-One Love Poems"

Just as you felt when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,

Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd.

                                                      --Walt Whitman from "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"

...and God was there like an island I had not rowed to

                                                      --Anne Sexton from "Rowing"


"That is not what I meant,
That is not what I meant at all."
                              --T.S Eliot from"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"    

Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?
                                               --William Carlos Williams from "Danse Russe"


Nothing's a gift, all's on loan.
                                             --Wislawa Szmborska form"Nothing's a Gift"

                                                                                                  

I am not wrong. Wrong is not my name

                                                    --June Jordan from "Poem About My Rights”

                               

And whatever it is that watches,

It has kept you from loneliness like a mob.

                                                   --Norman Dubie from "Confession"