Inspirational Poems
The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference
The Invitation
By Oriah Mountain Dreamer
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for,
And if you dare to dream of meeting
Your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
For love, for your dream,
For the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon.
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow,
If you have been opened by life’s betrayals,
Or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain,
Mine or your own,
Without moving
To hide it or fade it or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy,
Mine or your own,
If you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
Without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic,
or to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself,
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul.
I want to know if you can be faithless and therefore be trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see beauty
Even when it is not pretty every day,
And if you can source your life
From its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure,
Yours and mine,
And still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes!”
It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair,
Weary and bruised to the bone,
And do what needs to be done for the children.
It doesn’t interest me who you are, how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
In the center of the fire with me
And not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
From the inside
When all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone
With yourself,
And if you truly like the company you keep
In the empty moments.
The Serenity Prayer
By Reinhold Neibuhr
God grant that I might have
The courage to change the things I can,
The serenity to accept the things I cannot,
And the wisdom to know the difference
Look Well to This Day
Anonymous, 50 B.C.
Look well to this day,
For it and it alone is life.
In its brief course
Lie all the essence of your existence:
The Glory of Growth
The Satisfaction of Achievement
The Splendor of Beauty
For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is but a vision.
But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness,
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Compassion
By WingMakers
Angels must be confused by war. Both sides praying for protection, yet someone always gets hurt. Someone dies. Someone cries so deep they lose their watery state. Angels must be confused by war. Who can they help? Who can they clarify? Whose mercy do they cast to the merciless? No modest scream can be heard. No stainless pain can be felt. All is clear to angels except in war. When I awoke to this truth, it was from a dream I had last night. I saw two angels conversing in a field of children’s spirits rising like silver smoke. The angels were fighting among themselves about which side was right, and which was wrong. Who started the conflict? Suddenly, the angels stilled themselves like a stalled pendulum, and they shed their compassion to the rising smoke of souls who bore the watermark of war. They turned to me with those eyes from God’s library, and all the pieces fallen were raised in unison, intertwined like the breath of flames in a holy furnace. Nothing in war comes to destruction, but the illusion of separateness. I heard this spoken so clearly I could only write it down like a forged signature. I remember the compassion, mountainous, proportioned for the universe. I think a tiny fleck still sticks to me, like gossamer threads from a spider’s web. And now, when I think of war, I flick these threads to all the universe, hoping they stick on others as they did me. Knitting angels and animals to the filamental grace of compassion. The reticulum of our skyward home.
Follow Your Dream
by: Amanda Bradley
Follow your dream.
Take one step at a time and don’t settle for less,
Just continue to climb.
Follow your dream.
If you stumble, don’t stop and lose sight of your goal
Press to the top.
For only on top can we see the whole view,
Can we see what we’ve done and what we can do;
Can we then have the vision to seek something new,
Press on.
Follow your dream.
Climb ‘Til Your Dream Comes True
by Helen Steiner Rice
Climb ‘Til Your Dream Comes True
Often your tasks will be many,
And more than you think you can do.
Often the road will be rugged
And the hills insurmountable, too.
But always remember, the hills ahead
Are never as steep as they seem,
And with Faith in your heart start upward
And climb ‘Til you reach your dream.
For nothing in life that is worthy
Is never too hard to achieve
If you have the courage to try it
And you have the Faith to believe.
For Faith is a force that is greater
Than knowledge or power or skill
And many defeats turn to triumph
If you trust in God’s wisdom and will.
For Faith is a mover of mountains.
There’s nothing that God cannot do,
So start out today with Faith in your heart
And “Climb ‘Til Your Dream Comes True” !
Don’t Quit
By Unknown Author
When things go wrong as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,
When funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh.
When care is pressing you down a bit.
Rest, if you must, but don’t you quit.
Life is queer with its twists and turns
As every one of us sometimes learns.
And many a failure turns about
When he might have won had he stuck it out:
Don’t give up though the pace seems slow –
You may succeed with another blow.
Success is failure turned inside out –
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt.
And you never can tell how close you are.
It may be near when it seems so far:
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit
It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit.
You Can Be Whatever You Want To Be!
by Donna Levine
There is inside you
All of the potential
To be whatever you want to be;
All of the energy
To do whatever you want to do.
Imagine yourself as you would like to be,
Doing what you want to do,
And each day, take one step
Towards your dream.
And though at times it may seem too
difficult to continue,
Hold on to your dream.
One morning you will awake to find
That you are the person you dreamed of,
Doing what you wanted to do,
Simply because you had the courage
To believe in your potential
And to hold on to your dream.
Psalm Of Life
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,— act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing over life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
What I Want
By Unknown
I Am Powerful!
Whatever I set my mind on having, I will have.
Whatever I decide to be, I will be.
The evidence is all around me.
The power of my Will has brought me precisely to where
I am right now.
I have made the choices. I have held the thoughts.
I have taken the actions to create my current reality.
And I have the power to change it into whatever I want it to be.
With the choices I make, I am constantly fulfilling the vision I have for my life.
If that does not seem to be the case –
Then I am deceiving myself about what I really want.
Because what I really, truly want, I will get!
What I truly wanted in the past, I already have.
If I want to build a billion-dollar business, I will take the actions necessary to do it.
If I want to sit comfortably watching TV night after night –
I will take the actions necessary for that.
Don’t be disappointed in my results –
they’re just the outward manifestation of my priorities.
I will be sure of what I truly want,
because I am sure to get it!