Quotes within speech

I am looking for suggestions as to how to punctuate a quote within speech. The actual quote is made-up and reads as follows:

'Ne'er ruffled were a calm, clear lake

Without a boat the wake to make.'

I would like to insert it in a paragraph that reads as follows:



“You can get expelled for all sorts of things, I think,” I said, glaring at my unruly hair in the mirror and fixing it with a couple of clips, “but surely not for simply not working. Why, they’d have to expel over half of most schools, I imagine. No, it has to be more than that,” I insisted, already firm in my belief that there must be some more gratifying tale of high jinx to unfold. “Ne’er ruffled were a calm, clear lake, Without a boat the wake to make and all that.”



How does this look to most people? Do the italics overcome the need to put single quotation marks around that quote within the speech marks? Surely double and single quotation marks next to each other just looks plain inelegant? Also, is it correct to insert a comma in between lines of a poem when you omit the line break?