They also serve . . .

[pegkerr]

I asked an attorney to sign a couple pleadings today as he was passing by my desk; they had been prepared by one of the associates for whom I work, who said we'd be filing them in federal court today. The attorney told me that he was still working on the related brief, and wasn't sure it would go out today, but that he'd get back to me.

"That's okay, I'll be here," I said as he walked away from my desk. "They also serve who only stand and wait."

And then it occurred to me: how many legal secretaries routinely quote Milton in their day-to-day working lives?

I looked up that particular sonnet, which I hadn't read in several years, although I do often quote that line. I had forgotten how closely it tracks a problem I have often thought and written about. Milton was speaking of his blindness, and I was speaking of writers block, but we both suffered from the same result, the gnawing feeling that God would call us to account for not using the talent He had given us. Given that Milton so clearly understood how I feel, I find the conclusion of the poem deeply comforting, which is probably why I have remembered it and quoted it so often.

Tell me a line of poetry (or perhaps a song lyric) you often quote to people in your daily life. What poem is it from, and why does it speak to you so strongly?

Comments

They also....

[markiv1111.livejournal.com]

I did hear that a major organization of surfers had declared Jesus Christ to be an honorary member. "They also surf who only stand on waves."

Nate

Re: They also....

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

*cracks up*

[glinda-w.livejournal.com]

Three lines, the first two and the last, from the Millay sonnet "On Hearing a Symphony of Beethoven" (http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Poetry/Millay/On_Hearing_a_Symphony_of_Beethoven.html)

Sweet sounds, oh, beautiful music, do not cease!
Reject me not into the world again.

Music my rampart, and my only one.

They've always, since I read the poem as a teenager, been words I've said, or thought... whatever else happens in my life is, in the end, transient; music is the constant.

[avengangle.livejournal.com]

And then it occurred to me: how many legal secretaries routinely quote Milton in their day-to-day working lives?

Probably more than one might think; how many people are working jobs unrelated to their undergraduate degrees?

Apparently my husband (a computer guy with a degree in music, by the way) quoted Shakespeare (he can't remember what, but something from Hamlet) in an email, and came back the next day to find an email from his boss, asking him to explain what it meant. I wish he'd saved the email, but he didn't.

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you're right, God's gonna judge us on not using our talents, but at the same time, God understands.

[lapin-agile.livejournal.com]

A very good question: it makes me see that I tend to quote literature in order to be sardonic.

Often, these days, I find myself muttering Hamlet's "Words, words, words." In other passages of life, though, my favorite has been:

The very deep did rot: oh Christ!
That ever this should be!
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea. (Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner)

I think that I learned this habit of quoting in order to mock-scowl at myself or at the world from my father, who had it from his mother, who had it from hers. My father favors lines like "the boy stood on the burning deck...", whereas my grandmother and great-grandmother were committed fans of "it was a chilly day for Willy when the mercury went down."

Do others quote uplifting lines?

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

*hee* One of my favorite poems. Speaking of Coleridge, I have been known to quote the final verse of Kubla Khan on the slimmest of pretexts:

... And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise"

I'm pretty sure that was the poet's vision of himself as a blazing 18th century version of a rock star. Great stuff, that laudanum.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

*heh* As it happens, the stanza of deathless poetry I most recently had reason to quote was:

You are old, said the youth, and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet.
Yet you finished the goose with the bones and the beak.
Pray, how did you manage to do it?"

Probably most often I quote Dr. Seuss:
From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere.
- or -
I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful, one hundred percent.

You ask the most interesting thought questions! [But somehow I don't feel that I'm quite living up to the caliber of the rest of you with my tastes in poetry. Oh well.]

[irinaauthor.livejournal.com]

Someone I met just the other day made me think of You Are Old, Father William. That same verse, even.

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

From Stephen Dunn's poem "The Guardian Angel"
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2001/01/31

he believes, he needs
to believe
everything he does takes root, hums

beneath the surfaces of the world.

Because I do. I need to believe that as well. I need to believe it all matters, somehow.

[http://users.livejournal.com/anam_cara_/]

Ok, I may not quote this to others, but it often runs through my mind for my own personal benefit.

It is from the poem Eurydice by H.D., which I long ago put in its entirety as my LJ bio. Discovering Hilda Doolittle in an undergrad elective course meant so very much to me, her words and tone seem so incredibly powerful and strong, they just resonate for me.

"and my spirit with its loss
knows this;
though small against the black,
small against the formless rocks,
hell must break before I am lost;"

My favorite riff

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

On the Milton line, was an Andy Capp cartoon with Andy and the Mrs. at a pub: "They also serve who only stand and drink."

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

There's no poem that I quote remotely as often as I do the lines Robert Bolt puts in Thomas More's mouth in A Man for All Seasons. I won't repeat them here, but it's the dialog that ends, "Yes, I'd give the Devil the benefit of law, for my own safety's sake." There's a cadence to it all that reads like poetry to me. It speaks to me because it says exactly what I think about the law: our only safety lies in its even-handed application.

[irinaauthor.livejournal.com]

"Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair."

Weirdly, that's probably the line of poetry I quote most often. Mainly when I've screwed something up, but also when something's just gone really, really well.

[irinaauthor.livejournal.com]

Oh, and also from Hamlet:

LORD POLONIUS My lord, the queen would speak with you, and
presently.
HAMLET Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?
LORD POLONIUS By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed.
HAMLET Methinks it is like a weasel.
LORD POLONIUS It is backed like a weasel.
HAMLET Or like a whale?
LORD POLONIUS Very like a whale.

Whenever Steve and I are telling each other about our days and can't properly articulate what something looked like we say it was, "Very like a whale."

[lapin-agile.livejournal.com]

You've made my day! -- I cut "Very like a whale" out of my list above because it's hard to explain exactly when/why I use it -- for me it's about sycophancy or people agreeing just to move a conversation along. Usually I take liberties and render it "Oh, very like a whale, my lord," which is not what Polonius says, but gets his sense across (I think) without context.

*tips hat to you*

[irinaauthor.livejournal.com]

That's fantastic! Cheers to you!

[irinaauthor.livejournal.com]

Have you seen this?



It's Hamlet done in in ten minutes with Legos by some high school kids as their final project. It's hilarious. And they include the whale line!

[irinaauthor.livejournal.com]

It occurred to me after writing this that my mom also has a poem she quotes when she messes things up. Her middle name is Casey, so of course she says, “There is no joy in Mudville - mighty Casey has struck out.” It must run in families.

[malinaldarose.livejournal.com]

I say "there is no joy in Mudville" quite a lot.

[avylou.livejournal.com]

I was about to quote from this poem as well, but I take it a half line further. It reminds me to be humble. :-)

And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains...

[wild-patience.livejournal.com]

As I dislike using telephones, I'm apt to quote from Evita,

If you need anything,
You could give us a ring,
But we don't always answer the phone.

Good post. I have been wallowing in anxiety about my job situation (on a temporary lay-off, job supposed to resume Feb. 2, but as stock is currently at 9-cents a share, who knows if there will still be a job there) and wondering if this is God telling me to find another line of work. I'm a musician working in the semiconductor field because as soon as I got my music degree, California passed a proposition which cut down on the amount of property taxes collected and many music teachers lost their jobs. I do music at church on a volunteer basis, so that doesn't pay anything. I don't know if there's more that God wants me to do but, if so, I wish he'd be a little more specific. I'm running out of things I've trained to do.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Let me offer Isaac Asimov's variant, a joke he told many years ago.

An older dude liked to hang out with surfers at the beach. He told stories of his exploits. Every time someone told of riding a wave or shooting the tube, he had ridden a higher wave or shot a larger tube. But no one ever saw him go out. Eventually, he was challenged to actually demonstrate his skill. They chided him, until one day he grabbed a board, walked ankle deep into the ocean, turned around planted the board tail down and stood proudly, exclaiming,

"They also surf who only stand and wade."

Me? I tend to quote Ogden Nash, but that's a different story.

[dreamcoat-mom.livejournal.com]

Whenever I'm feeling as though my life accounts for little, or I desperately want what I can't have (and that's often) I remember a line from an old hymn:
"Have you not seen? All that is needful has been."

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

That's from "Praise to the Lord." I love that hymn. We had that sung at our wedding.

[desert-sparrow.livejournal.com]

I've always assumed the last line was an allusion to I Samuel 30 and should be interpreted in light of that chapter.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=9&chapter=30&version=31

[avylou.livejournal.com]

From The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot:

"April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land...."

I've never read the whole poem, but that quote was a chapter heading in my favorite Mary Stewart book, Nine Coaches Waiting, and it makes me think of that first smell of early Spring, when things are just starting to melt and the odor is sharp and even a bit unpleasant... almost like all the doggie doodoo from the winter is unthawing...