Lines I Sing to Myself in My Sleep

Your words are your words till I repeat them and make them mine. Your stories are your stories till I live them and make them mine.

Literature and music have always served as my comfort havens. The power these two hold over me is immeasurable and all-consuming. It was in my early teens that I realized and actually felt that I had a soul and could be moved by things outside of me. I would find myself repeating, almost singing lines, phrases, quotes, or lyrics from different poems, books, plays, or songs I might’ve come across. And they always seemed to guide me home. So today I thought it might be a good exercise for me to share, not entire poems or narratives, but the strings of words that have always brought me an almost delirious bliss. Here goes.

·         Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me

&

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,  
And miles to go before I sleep,  
And miles to go before I sleep.

(Robert Frost)

·         To be or not to be, that is the question
(William Shakespeare)

·         By faith, and faith alone, embrace
(A. L. Tennyson)

·         सहसा क्या हाल विचित्र हुआ, मैं कैसे पुण्य-चरित्र हुआ?
(रश्मिरथी)

·         And because I am happy, and dance and sing,
They think they have done me no injury.
(William Blake)

·         Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods maybe
For my unconquerable soul.
(William Ernest Henley)

·         Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.
(Mary Elizabeth Frye)

·         The first feminist gesture is to say: “Ok. They’re looking at me. But I’m looking at them.” The act of deciding to look, of deciding that the is not defined by how people see me, but by how I see them.
(Agnès Varda)

·         Man’s love is of man’s life a part; it is a woman’s whole existence. In her first passion, a woman loves her lover, in all the others all she loves is love.
(Lord Byron)

·         Where bright imagination reigns
The fine-wrought spirit feels acuter pains.
(Hannah More)

·         When you get what you want but not what you need
(Fix you by Coldplay)

·         The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Awaits alike the inevitable hour:
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
(Thomas Gray)

·         and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
(E. E. Cummings)

·         De profundis clamo ad te, domine (Out of the depths, I cry to you, Oh Lord)
(The Sixth Sense)

·         Think of him still the same, I say:
He is not dead- he is just away!
(James Whitcomb Riley)

·         There is no pain, you are receding
(Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd)

·         There sifts a light from memory past
Or fall eyes shut dreaming again,
I am not I, not where I am
This light is naught but falling rain.

·         Oh courage! Take heart.

The last two are by yours truly. I have so, so many more to write down here but once again, I feel overtaken by a fit of passion. Do share your go-to lines and let me know if any of these resonate with you!