This tattoo was submitted by Emily.

Alas, that love, whose view is muffled still,
Should, without eyes, see pathways to his will!
Where shall we dine? O me! What fray was here?
Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all.
Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love.
Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O any thing, of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness! serious vanity!
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire,
sick health!
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!
This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
Dost thou not laugh?

- Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Act I, Sc I.

(28 votes, average: 4.14 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Kevin submitted this tattoo of Max from Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are“.

(48 votes, average: 4.21 out of 5)

 Loading ...

This tattoo was submitted by Caitlin:

This was my favorite poem growing up. After playing with tattoo ideas for a while when this one hit me, so I went with it, and it became my first tattoo.

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

- Edgar Allan Poe, A Dream Within A Dream

PS
Yesterday would have been Poe’s 300th 200th birthday!  I can count.

(42 votes, average: 2.83 out of 5)

 Loading ...

These tattoos were submitted by Carl:

Right Forearm: “We are the ones we have been waiting for.” – June Jordan, from “Poem for South African Women” from Passion: New Poems 1977-1980

Left Forearm: “The year burns an icon into the blood.” – Yusef Komunyakaa, from “1984″ originally published in I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head

The Komunyakaa one was my first tattoo- 1984 is also my birth year. I used the June Jordan line (with the contraction that is not in the original poem) in a sculpture during my Senior Thesis show.

(31 votes, average: 3.94 out of 5)

 Loading ...

O, I die, Horatio;
The potent poison quite o’er-crows my spirit:
I cannot live to hear the news from England;
But I do prophesy the election lights
On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice;
So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less,
Which have solicited. The rest is silence.

- Hamlet, act V, scene ii

This tattoo belongs to Nicky:

I got this tattoo to celebrate getting a 2:1 for my English Literature degree – I’ve since been accepted to a post-grad course in Shakespeare studies, so I’m sure it’ll be an intersting talking point there!

(32 votes, average: 4.38 out of 5)

 Loading ...

This tattoo is from Dante’s Inferno, Canto XV.

Chili Engels explains her tattoo:

Full line is as follows:

se tu segui tu stella, non puoi fallire a glorioso porto

(if you follow your star, you cannot fail to reach a splendid harbor)

I didn’t want the whole line on my wrist, so I condensed it to the “you
cannot fail” plus a star.

(24 votes, average: 3.88 out of 5)

 Loading ...

“Wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure.”

- Luna Lovegood in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling

This tattoo was submitted by Liz, who says:

The quote was engraved in the back of Rowena Ravenclaw’s headdress, which is tiara like, and the wearer was bestowed with great intelligence.

(55 votes, average: 3.98 out of 5)

 Loading ...

This tattoo was submitted by Case:

I am the proud bearer of a literary tattoo myself, as shown in the enclosed image – that’s the VFD logo from A Series of Unfortunate Events by the inimitably fictitious Lemony Snicket. In the style of Mr. Snicket, I can only say that the story behind this tattoo involves a concrete cave, a very rude girl, the Floridian Sister Act of 1984, and a specially-modified seat in Rows 4 and 6 of a particular amusement thrill ride.

(43 votes, average: 4.07 out of 5)

 Loading ...

This tattoo was submitted by floweredscience, who says: “I’m just obsessed with Alice in Wonderland.”

Illustration by Sir John Tenniel for the chapter “A Mad Tea-Party” in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.  Wow, that was a mouthful.

(60 votes, average: 4.48 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Emily submitted this tattoo, and said:  “I got this as a Christmas present this year and was sad to see that someone else on your blog has the same verse!”

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune–without the words,
And never stops-at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

— Hope is the Thing With Feathers by Emily Dickinson

(54 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)

 Loading ...