how well do you know your poems & authors?

[loulou]

I've been reading "Best loved poems" today trying to pass the time before i head to work. This got me thinking of my mother in law who can remember the title of a poem & the name of author just by quoteing the first line of the poem to her. So i thought i would try it out here.

For example

Had we but world enough,& time

The next person would then post the title of this poem & it's author

Title; To his coy mistress
Author; Andrew Marvell

Then you quote the first line from a different poem for the next person

So i'll start with an easy one

[loulou]

My love is like a red,red rose

[Henry P]

robert Burns

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

[Maryd.]

The one and only - William Shakespeare


...for whom my heart tolls

[Henry P]

Don't know that one, my dear

[Maryd.]

Silly me meant...

...for whom the bell tolls

[Henry P]

John Donne
water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink

[Maryd.]

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

let there be justice though the world perish...

[Henry P]

Don't know

[Maryd.]

Sorry Henry, it's not exactly a poem, it's a quote, by Ferdinand... I'm not good at this game.

What about...

Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down ones life...

[Henry P]

That's from the Bible, one of the Gospels
Call me Ishmael

[loulou]

Don't know this one

I play'd with you 'mid cowslips blowing,

[Henry P]

Mine was the opening of "Moby DicK"
I don't know yours

[loulou]

Love & age-Thomas love peacock

O to be in England

[smorzando]

robert browning??

'when shall we three meet again? in thunder, lighting, or in rain?'

[Henry P]

the witches in Macbeth
It is a far far better thing I do than I have ever done before?

[smorzando]

*grins* a tale of two cities, of course, by the one and only dickens.

"i wandered lonely as a cloud"

[Henry P]

wordsworth- daffodils
Of man's first disobedience?

[smorzando]

john milton -- of man's first disobedience and the fruit

'i hope i will be able to confide everything to you, as i have never been able to confide in anyone, and i hope you will be a great source of comfort and support'

[Henry P]

Don't know

[smorzando]

the opening phrase to the diary of anne frank.

here's an easier one: 'two roads diverged in a yellow wood'

[Henry P]

Robert Frost's The Road not taken?
Whan that aprill with his shoures soote?

[smorzando]

yup, that's right. and now you've caught me on this... it sounds SO familiar. it's not shakespeare tho. its earlier than that, right?? i'll stab a guess and say its chaucer..??? no idea after that, though.

'bent double, like old beggars under sacks'

[Henry P]

The opening line of the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales
Yours is from Dulce et Decorum est- Wilfred Owen
Please , Sir. I want some more?

[Maryd.]

Did you do that one for me Henry...

Oliver in Oliver Twist by the great Charles Dickens

Ok, now everyone should know this one...


As god is my witness i shall never go hungry again...

[Henry P]

gone with the Wind. I read it recently and love the film
The quality of mercy is not strained?

[smorzando]

that's more shakespeare for you, from the merchant of venice.

'you do not do, you do not do'

[Henry P]

Don't know
The mirror cracked from side to side?

[smorzando]

you talking about the novel by agatha christie? or tennyson's the lady of shalott? one of the two, anyways.

mine was the opening to daddy by sylvia plath.

'i imagine this midnight moment's forest'

[Henry P]

don't know
did gyre and gimble in the wabe?

[smorzando]

*grins* jabberwocky!! gotta love lewis carroll

mine was from the thought fox by ted hughes.

'to die, to sleep, to sleep perchance to dream. ay, there's the rub --'

[Henry P]

Hamlet
and live off the fatta the lan' ?

[DDG]

Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men :-)

...and justify the ways of God to men.

[Henry P]

milton 's paradise Lost
slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

[smorzando]

the second coming by yeats

'we are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan'

[Questingpoet]

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

.....the last lines of "Fern Hill" by Dylan Thomas.

[Henry P]

i grow old, i grow old...

[smorzando]

mine was actually from kitchenette building by gwendolyn brooks http://poetryoutloud.org/poems/poem.html?id=172080

yours is ts eliot... love song of j alfred prufrock.

'the box is only temporary'

[Henry P]

Hold your noise!