10 lines that stay with me across time

From David Graham -- 10 lines from poems or songs that stay with me across time.

I had to do two lists, because there are too many songs in my head crowding out almost everything else.

So I'll start with the poems.

Men at forty
learn to close slowly
the doors to rooms they
will not be coming back to.
-- Donald Justice


A terrible beauty is born.
-- W. B. Yeats

[Time] will pardon Paul Claudel
Pardon him for writing well.
-- W. H. Auden

She dwells with beauty, beauty that must die
-- John Keats

as if words were the burden
he’d been bearing, all his life.
-- Donald Finkel


Now you invent the boat of your flesh
-- Mark Strand

'Don't, don't, don't, don't,' she cried.
-- Robert Frost

Owls were bearing the farm away.
-- Dylan Thomas

Goodnight to the old lady whispering "hush."
-- Margaret Wise Brown

Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke



and ten lines from songs


Open up honey, it's your lover boy, me, that's knockin!
--Jerry Lee Lewis

She was with Big Jim, but she was leaning toward the Jack of Hearts.
-- Bob Dylan

Forever for Jennifer Johnson and me.
--Fred Koller

Sir or Madam, will you read my book?
-- Lennon - McCartney

Old trees just grow stronger,
And old rivers grow wilder ev'ry day.
--John Prine

Yes, it's me, and I'm in love again.
--Fats Domino

He saw Aunt Mary coming and he ducked back in the alley.
--Little Richard

I believe a change is gonna come.
--Sam Cooke

Never hit seventeen when you play against the dealer.
--Ian Tyson

If dogs run free, why not me?
--Bob Dylan