The Writing Prompt

Be inspired by a great opening line – a compelling, 

fantastic opening line — she said, quoting 150 beginnings 

of novels.  But it’s lines of poems that spring to my mind. 

‘The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold,  

And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;’

or, ‘The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.  

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas. 

The road was a ribbon of darkness over the purple moor,  

And the highwayman came riding — Riding —’

And I wonder what it is in me, that thrills to these dramas 

of violence.  I cast my thoughts further, and find

‘Break, break, break, On thy cold grey stones, O Sea!

And I would  that my tongue could utter The thoughts

that arise in me’ or, ‘The wind doth blow today, my love,  

And a few small drops of rain; I never had but one true love, 

In cold grave she was lain’  — moving away from violence

but retaining tragedy. Why don’t I go for softness, beauty?
But I suppose an arresting opener needs some drama.

I always found, ‘Let us go then, you and I’ enticing.

Sounds like fun, adventure, without all the death and such.

But then he goes on, and it turns out he’s inviting me to see

‘the evening … spread out against the sky Like a patient

etherized upon a table;’ ugh! and then into ‘sawdust restaurants’

and ‘one-night cheap hotels’. Or there’s Yeats, also talking 

of departure: ‘I shall arise and go now ….’ heading for a sweet 

and peaceful place, soothing. But possibly boring.

When all’s said and done, I think I’ll stick to Byron, Tennyson 

et al, with all their thumping heroics and wrenching doom, 

rather than Eliot’s squalor (though his too is an opening line 

that sticks in the memory) or even Yeats’s soporific retreat. 

In real life I might be timid and law-abiding. Let literature 

thrill me with calls to adventure. Let it stir my blood! 

Oh, ‘I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea 

and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by …’

Quotations, in order, are from:

'The Destruction of Sennacherib,' Byron
'The Highwayman,' Alfred Noyes
'Break, Break, Break,' Tennyson 
'The Unquiet Grave,' Anonymous

'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,' T.S. Eliot

'The Lake Isle of Innisfree,' W.B. Yeats

'Sea-Fever,' John Masefield

Written for Friday Writings #85 at Poets and Storytellers United.