Quoting Three Lines or Fewer MLA 3.7.3, 6.4.8

When you are quoting three lines or fewer from a poem, you may incorporate the quotation into the body of your paragraph.

Tips for quoting up to three lines of poetry:

Use slashes (/) to indicate line breaks within the poem
Keep all punctuation intact as it appears in the poem
Use quotation marks to denote the beginning and end of the quotation
If you have included the name of the poet elsewhere in your paper, do not include the poet's name in your parenthetical citation. Instead, include the first significant word of the poem's title, followed by the line number(s). This is especially important if you are quoting more than one poem by the same author in your paper.

Example

Eliot immediately engages the reader with his use of the second person in the opening lines: "Let us go then, you and I / When the evening is spread out against the sky" ("Prufrock" 1-2).

 

However, if you have mentioned the title of the poem in the sentences immediately preceding you quotation, you can cite the line number only.

Example

In his "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," Eliot immediately engages the reader with his use of the second person in the opening lines: "Let us go then, you and I / When the evening is spread out against the sky" (1-2).