[Fizzle]

I really liked this couple of verses from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land:

There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

The famous "I will show you fear in a handful of dust" is, IMO, an especially powerful line if you look at it from the POV of the Genesis myth; we being created from what to God must be a handful of dust, we who know fear so well.

From the same poem I also like the Death by Water part:

PHLEBAS the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

The last three verses are my favorite (the rest is context, really. The punch, IMO, is in those last three). In them, I read a warning, (consider Death) to those young ones who pretend to sail the seas of life with hope and ambition ("turn the wheel and look to windward"). A reminder that even in our seemingly invincible youth we are still ripe for harvest.

Full poem: http://www.bartelby.com/201/1.html

I have other favorites, but I'll leave them for later (or mebbe I'll blog them).

[Gurdur]

I have several favourite poems. Later I will cite them.