Column Chronicles: Anatomy of famous poetry lines

Anatomy of famous poetry lines

Frank Cotolo
January 27, 2022

The great poets are those quoted all the time. Those we quote, however, did not just pop out of the minds of the great poets or even the good ones. They are lines that developed from many different versions. Here are some memorable lines from poems and versions that preceded.

Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.
Roses are roses but one is just a rose.
Rose be a rose, nothing but a rose.
- Stein

Human kind cannot bear very much reality
Mankind is barely real.
A human's reality is nothing like that of a bear.
- Eliot

The proper study of mankind is a man.
Man oh man, study his kind.
Do not study man unless you study mankind.
- Pope

A narrow fellow in the grass.
Thin is he who travels through grass.
Who goes there?
- Dickenson

I am the master of my fate
Fate is not my master, not mine.
I rule fate and scorn it with great hate and will not bow to it, not me.
- Henley

And miles to go before I sleep.
Sleep, to sleep, but I have so far to go yet.
ZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
- Frost

I wandered lonely as a cloud.
I wonder floating as a cloud.
Clouds have lonely friends.
- Wordsworth

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
To seek, to strive, to discover, and not know it.
Seeking, striving, finding and for what?
- Shelley

Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all.
True beauty is all, no more.
Truth, beauty, that is everything, total.
- Keats

Full fathom five thy father lies.
Full of it father, lies, all lies.
Thy lies are thy father's lies, five of them.
- Shakespeare

Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.