Poetry Quotations Flashcards
War photographer
“spools of suffering set out in ordered rows”
“tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers”
“a hundred agonies in black and white”
Remains
“one of them legs it up the road”
“every round as it rips through his life”
“his bloody life in my bloody hands”
Charge of the Light Brigade
“into the jaws of death, into the mouth of hell”
“cannon to right of them, cannon to left of them, cannon behind them”
Bayonet Charge
“bullets smacking the belly out of the air - he lugged a rifle numb as a smashed arm”
“in what cold clockwork of the stars and the nations Was he the hand pointing that second”
“then the shot-slashed furrows Threw up a yellow hare that rolled like a flame And crawled in a threshing cirle, its mouth wide Open silent, its eyes standing out”
Exposure
“our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us”
“sudden successive flight of bullets streak the silence. Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow”
“the burying-party, picks and shovels in shaking grasp. Pause over half-known faces”
Poppies
“I wanted to graze my nose across the tip of your nose, play at being eskimos like we did when you were little”
“after you’d gone I went into your bedroom, released a song bird from its cage”
“I traced the inscriptions of the war memorial, leaned against it like a wishbone”
Storm on the Island
Sea is “exploding comfortably”
“the flung spray hits The very windows, spits liked a tame cat Turned savage”
“we are bombarded by the empty air”
London
“and mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe”
“the mind-forg’d manacles I hear”
“and blights with plagues the marriage hearse”
Extract from, ‘The Prelude’
“troubled pleasure”
“straight I unloosed her chain” & “lustily I dipped my oars in the silent lake”
“struck and struck again” + “trembling oars”
Tissue
Paper being “fine slips” and “luminous scripts”
“might fly our lives like paper kites”
“see how easily They fall away on a sigh”
Ozymandias
“king of kings”
“boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far way”
“nothing beside remains”
Checking out me History
“dem tell me”
“bandage me eye with me own history Blind me to me own identity”
“dem tell me about Lord Nelson and Waterloo, but dem never tell me about Shaka de great zulu”
My Last Duchess
“there’s my last duchess painted on the wall, looking as if she were alive, I call”
“that spot of joy”
“I gave commands and then all smiles stopped together”
The Emigrée
“branded by […] sunlight”
“the bright, filled paperweight”
“it tastes of sunlight”
Kamikaze (4)
“which had been the better way to die”
“embarked at sunrise”
“chattering and laughing” vs “learned to be silent”
“as their bellies swivelled towards the sun”
