Quote your favourite lines.

[Mal McLean]

I have started this thread for posting your favourite lines. Can be from any era or style I suppose.

I'll start with an extract from Ye Weary Wayfarer by Adam Lindsay Gordon.

'Question not, but live and labour
till yon goal be won,
helping every feeble neighbour,
seeking help from none;
Life is mostly froth and bubble,
two things stand like stone,
KINDNESS in another's trouble,
COURAGE in your own.'

Courage, comrades, this is certain,
all is for the best-
There are lights behind the curtain-
Gentles let us rest.

.....

[william williams]

Thank MAL they would be amongst the greatest words said by an Australian poet

Life is mostly froth and bubble,
two things stand like stone,
KINDNESS in another's trouble,
COURAGE in your own.'

bill the old battler

[manfredvijars]

If a picture can paint a thousand words, that's art.
But if a few words can paint a thousand pictures - THAT'S POETRY ...
Graham Fredriksen

[Bob Pacey]

Gotta get in early here.


" No need for fancy riding now,
Boys take them at the jump.



Still use it when a job need doing quickly.



Poetry rules your life.


Bob

[Neville Briggs]

My favourite bush poem lines I have given already. The first stanza of Banjo Paterson's The Travelling Post Office.
"The roving breezes come and go, the reed beds sweep and sway,
The sleepy river murmers low, and loiters on its way,
It is the land of lots o'time along the Castlereagh "

My favourite lines from the historic poets is Sir Walter Raleigh's poem As you came from the Holy Land.
" But true love is a durable fire
In the mind ever burning:
Never sick, never old, never dead,
From itself never turning. "

And one that is so familiar that it probably doesn't get noticed as it should for its power and passion from Laurence Binyon's For the Fallen

"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them. "

[Wendy Seddon]

From "No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest"
by Dame Mary Gilmore

...last verse.

We are the sons of Australia,
of the men who fashioned the land;
We are the sons of the women
Who walked with them hand in hand;
And we swear by the dead who bore us,
By the heroes who blazed the trail,
No foe shall gather our harvest,
Or sit on our stockyard rail

[Stephen Whiteside]

(from memory - could be some minor mistakes)

The Growth of Sym (from 'The Glugs of Gosh' - C.J. Dennis)

Now, Sym was a Glug, and 'tis mentioned so,
And the tale reads perfectly plain as we go.
In his veins ran the blood of that curious race
Of docile folk who inhabit the place
Called Gosh - sad Gosh - where the tall trees sigh
With a strange significant sort of cry...etc. etc.

[Stephen Whiteside]

Marty, I think Banjo might have been a bit confused about the nature of echoes. The stock-whip didn't WAKE the echoes, it CREATED them. It's not like the echoes were just lying there asleep after eating too much for lunch until the stock-whip came along and made a loud noise and woke them up and they sat there for a while rubbing their eyes and wondering where on earth they were. It's simple science - and you a scientist, too! I am surprised!

[Bob Pacey]

Yeah Marty get ya facts right before you post.

If I did not know any better I'd reckon Steve was ( as a Pommie would say )

Taking the piss ! Good one Stephen.


Bob

[Neville Briggs]

The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a great poem, I agree, very powerful lines.

Poetry is not science Stephen, surely.. although maybe E=mc² is very elegant and poetic.