Theme · 29 poems

Inspirational Poems

Invictus energy: poems for lockers, desks, hospital walls, and hard mornings. The classics people memorize when they need a spine.

LengthForm

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

Langston Hughes · 1921

I've known rivers:I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

6 lines · free verse

Pied Beauty

Gerard Manley Hopkins · 1877

Glory be to God for dappled things— For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

11 lines · lyric

"Hope" is the thing with feathers

Emily Dickinson · 1891

"Hope" is the thing with feathers —That perches in the soul —And sings the tune without the words —

12 lines · lyric

The New Colossus

Emma Lazarus · 1883

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,With conquering limbs astride from land to land;Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

14 lines · sonnet

Invictus

William Ernest Henley · 1888

Out of the night that covers me,Black as the pit from pole to pole,I thank whatever gods may be

16 lines · lyric

Abou Ben Adhem

Leigh Hunt · 1834

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,And saw within the moonlight in his room,

18 lines · narrative

Mother to Son

Langston Hughes · 1922

Well, son, I'll tell you:Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.It's had tacks in it,

20 lines · free verse

The Road Not Taken

Robert Frost · 1916

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stood

20 lines · lyric

If—

Rudyard Kipling · 1910

If you can keep your head when all about youAre losing theirs and blaming it on you;If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

32 lines · lyric

What Is to Be Done, O Moslems? (opening lines)

Rumi (Jalāl al-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī)

What is to be done, O Moslems? for I do not recognise myself.I am neither Christian, nor Jew, nor Gabr, nor Moslem.I am not of the East, nor of the West, nor of the land, nor of the sea;

3 lines · ghazal

H-O-P-E (an Acrostic)

The QuillOak Editors

Hold on — not to how it was,Only to what it still could be;Plant something small in the wreckage,

4 lines · acrostic

The Song of the Reed (opening lines)

Rumi (Jalāl al-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī)

Hearken to the reed-flute, how it complains,Lamenting its banishment from its home:“Ever since they tore me from my osier bed,

4 lines · lyric

There is no Frigate like a Book

Emily Dickinson · 1896

To take us lands away,Nor any coursers like a pageOf prancing poetry.

4 lines · lyric

If I can stop one Heart from breaking

Emily Dickinson · 1890

If I can stop one heart from breaking,I shall not live in vain;If I can ease one life the aching,

7 lines · lyric

The Tassel

The QuillOak Editors

It's just a string, the tassel is,a finger's worth of thread —but look what it took to move it

8 lines · lyric

The Zero on the Cake

The QuillOak Editors

A zero on the birthday cakecan read like a full stop —a summit marker, halfway sign,

8 lines · lyric

The Forest, Writing Back

The QuillOak Editors

You won't remember every student;there were thousands. Fair enough.But somewhere out here, all grown,

8 lines · free verse

A Sentence of Yours Stays

The QuillOak Editors

A lesson lasts an hour;a term is just a phase;but somewhere in each student,

8 lines · lyric

The Robe Goes Back Tomorrow

The QuillOak Editors

The robe goes back tomorrow(it's rented, like the hall);the cap belongs to no one —

8 lines · lyric

Commencement

The QuillOak Editors

They named it wrong on purpose:commencement — a beginning,held at the end of everything you've known —

8 lines · free verse

What You Built

The QuillOak Editors

The job gets a replacement;the work, though — the work was neverthe spreadsheets or the shifts.

9 lines · free verse

On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer

John Keats · 1816

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been

14 lines · sonnet

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

Robert Herrick · 1648

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,Old Time is still a-flying;And this same flower that smiles today

16 lines · lyric

Concord Hymn

Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1837

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,Here once the embattled farmers stood

16 lines · lyric

Barter

Sara Teasdale · 1917

Life has loveliness to sell,All beautiful and splendid things,Blue waves whitened on a cliff,

18 lines · lyric

Eldorado

Edgar Allan Poe · 1849

Gaily bedight, A gallant knight,In sunshine and in shadow,

24 lines · ballad

A Psalm of Life

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · 1838

WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST.Tell me not, in mournful numbers,Life is but an empty dream!

37 lines · lyric

Miracles

Walt Whitman · 1856

WHY! who makes much of a miracle?As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,

37 lines · free verse

To a Skylark

Percy Bysshe Shelley · 1820

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!Bird thou never wert,That from Heaven, or near it,

105 lines · ode