• MY FAVORITE POEMS

    • IF

    If you can keep your head when all about you
    are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
    If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;
    If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
    Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
    And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

    If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
    If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim,
    If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;
    If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
    Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    and stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

    If you can make one heap of all your winnings,
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
    And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
    If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,
    And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

    If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
    Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
    If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
    If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
    Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
    And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son.

    Rudyard Kipling


    State of Mind

    If you think you are beaten, you are.
    If you think that you dare not, you don't.
    If you'd like to win, but think you can't,
    It's almost certain that you won't.

    If you think that you'll lose, you've lost.
    For out in the world you'll find,
    Success begins with a fellows will,
    It's all in the state of mind.

    If you think you are outclassed, you are.
    You've got to think high to rise.
    You've got to be sure of yourself before
    you can ever win a prize.

    Life's battles don't always go
    To the stronger or faster man,
    But sooner or later, the man who wins
    Is the man who thinks he can.

    Jesse Owens


    You've failed many times,
    although you may not remember.
    You fell down the first
    time you tried to walk.

    You almost drowned the first time
    you tried to swim, didn't you?
    Did you hit the ball
    the first time you swung a bat?

    Heavy hitters, the ones who hit the most home runs,
    also strike out a lot.
    R.H. Macy failed seven times before his store
    in New York caught on.
    English novelist John Creasey
    got 753 rejection slips before he published 564 books.
    Babe Ruth struck out 1,330 times, but
    he also hit 714 home runs.

    Don't worry about failure.
    Worry about the chances you miss
    when you don't even try.

    J.A. Liebler


    TO AN ATHLETE DYING YOUNG

    The time you won your town the race
    We chaired you through the market-place;
    Man and boy stood cheering by,
    And home we brought you shoulder-high.

    To-day, the road all runners come,
    Shoulder-high we bring you home,
    And set you at your threshold down,
    Townsman of a stiller town.

    Smart lad, to slip betimes away
    From fields where glory does not stay
    And early though the laurel grows
    It withers quicker than the rose.

    Eyes the shady night has shut
    Cannot see the record cut,
    And silence sounds no worse than cheers
    After earth has stopped the ears:

    Now you will not swell the rout
    Of lads that wore their honours out,
    Runners whom renown outran
    And the name died before the man.

    So set, before its echoes fade,
    The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
    And hold to the low lintel up
    The still-defended challenge-cup.

    And round that early-laurelled head
    Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
    And find unwithered on its curls
    The garland briefer than a girl's.

    -A.E. Housman


    The Road Not Taken

    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.

    -Robert Frost


    Nothing Gold Can Stay Nature's first green is gold,
    Her hardest hue to hold.
    Her early leaf's a flower;
    But only so an hour.
    Then leaf subsides to leaf.
    So Eden sank to grief,
    So dawn goes down to day.
    Nothing gold can stay.
    -Robert Frost


  • Special thanks to Robert J. Szczerba who provided some of these poems for me.