Invictus

by William Earnest Henley

Out of the night that covers me
Black as the Pit from pole to pole
I thank whatever gods maybe
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate
How charged with punishment the scroll
I am the Master of my fate
I am the Captain of my soul.

Live Life To Its Fullest

Don't let go of hope,
Hope gives you the strength to keep going
When you feel like giving up.

Don't ever quit believing in yourself,
As long as you believe you can,
You will have reason for trying.

Don't let anyone hold your happiness in their hands,
Hold it in yours,
So it will always be within your reach.

Don't measure success or failure
By material wealth,
But by how you feel,

Our feelings determine the richness of our lives.
Don't let bad moments overcome you,
Be patient, and they will pass.

Don't hesitate to reach out for help;
We all need it from time to time.

Don't run away from love but towards love,
Because it is your deepest joy.

Don't wait for what you want to come to you.
Go after it with all that you are,
Knowing that life will meet you halfway.

Don't feel like you've lost,
When plans and dreams fall short of your hopes.
Anytime you learn something new,
About yourself or about life,
You have progressed

Don't do anything that takes away,
From your self-respect.
Feeling good about yourself
Is essential to feeling good about life.

Don't ever forget how to laugh,
Or be too proud to cry,
Or too stubborn to smile.

Don't ever forget a friend who truly loves you,
As it could be that friend who is true to your needs.
Don't ever forget who helped you grow
As your needfor more seeds may often re-appear.

With all the above, live life to it's fullest....

Desiderata

by Max Ehrmann

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be
greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

You Can Change the World

by Daniel Haughian

Before you lies a journey we all must travel.
A journey whose length is not as important as
the footprints you will leave behind for others
to follow. A journey that has many paths, and
the one that you choose will decide the course
your life will take. You can opt for the easy and
well-trodden road, or you can venture down
the one rarely traveled. Either way, you have
the ability to make an impact upon this world,
so long as you follow the leanings of your own
heart rather than the desires of others. And
whichever road you choose to walk, let it show
that a good and noble person passed this way.
One who never sacrificed convictions for a place
in the sun or easy gain, but one who kept
to the true and right path. And let it also show
that you did not count your wealth in riches,
but in how many walk this earth with humanity
in their hearts, because the footprints you made
in this life showed you walked in the footsteps of love.

Don't Quit

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will
When the road you're trudging seems all uphill
When the 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 fellow 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.

Often the goal is nearer than
It seems to a faint and faltering man;
Often the struggler has given up
When he might have captured the victor's cup;
And he learned too late when the night came down
How close he was to the golden crown.

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 afar;
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit
It's when things seem worst that you mustn't quit.

Carousel

Sometimes, we masquerade around
Wearing smiles
But deep inside, we cry out loud
And really don't know why
Amidst a thousand laughter
We are to be so free
This is all the audience see
A cloud of sorrows-
This is our reality.

Suddenly...
The clown puts on his masks and
The music plays again
Behind the screen still
Are doubts and confusions.
But then,
Lights, Camera, Action!
LIfe must go on!

Please Hear What I'm Not Saying

Don't be fooled by me.
Don't be fooled by the face I wear
For I wear a mask, a thousand masks,
Masks that I'm afraid to take off
And none of them is me.

Pretending is an art that's second nature with me,
but don't be fooled,
for God's sake don't be fooled.
I give you the impression that I'm secure,
that all is sunny and unruffled with me,
within as well as without,
that confidence is my name and coolness my game,
that the water's calm and I'm in command
and that I need no one,
but don't believe me.
My surface may be smooth but
my surface is my mask,
ever-varying and ever-concealing.
Beneath lies no complacence.
Beneath lies confusion, and fear, and aloneness.
But I hide this. I don't want anybody to know it.
I panic at the thought of my weakness exposed.
That's why I frantically create a mask to hide behind,
a nonchalant sophisticated facade,
to help me pretend,
to shield me from the glance that knows.
But such a glance is precisely my salvation,
my only hope, and I know it.
That is, if it is followed by acceptance,
If it is followed by love.
It's the only thing that can liberate me from myself
from my own self-built prison walls
from the barriers that I so painstakingly erect.
It's the only thing that will assure me
of what I can't assure myself,
that I'm really worth something.
But I don't tell you this. I don't dare to. I'm afraid to.
I'm afraid you'll think less of me,
that you'll laugh, and your laugh would kill me.
I'm afraid that deep-down I'm nothing
and that you will see this and reject me.
So I play my game, my desperate, pretending game
With a façade of assurance without
And a trembling child within.
So begins the glittering but empty parade of Masks,
And my life becomes a front.
I tell you everything that's really nothing,
and nothing of what's everything,
of what's crying within me.
So when I'm going through my routine
do not be fooled by what I'm saying.
Please listen carefully and try to hear what I'm not saying,
what I'd like to be able to say,
what for survival I need to say,
but what I can't say.I don't like hiding.
I don't like playing superficial phony games.
I want to stop playing them.
I want to be genuine and spontaneous and me
but you've got to help me.
You've got to hold out your hand
even when that's the last thing I seem to want.
Only you can wipe away from my eyes
the blank stare of the breathing dead.
Only you can call me into aliveness.
Each time you're kind, and gentle, and encouraging,
each time you try to understand because you really care,
my heart begins to grow wings –
very small wings,
but wings!

With your power to touch me into feeling
you can breathe life into me.
I want you to know that.
I want you to know how important you are to me,
how you can be a creator--an honest-to-God creator –
of the person that is me
if you choose to.
You alone can break down the wall behind which I tremble,
you alone can remove my mask,
you alone can release me from the shadow-world of panic,
from my lonely prison,
if you choose to.
Please choose to.

Do not pass me by.
It will not be easy for you.
A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls.
The nearer you approach me
the blinder I may strike back.
It's irrational, but despite what the books may say about man
often I am irrational.
I fight against the very thing I cry out for.
But I am told that love is stronger than strong walls
and in this lies my hope.
Please try to beat down those walls
with firm hands but with gentle hands
for a child is very sensitive.

Who am I, you may wonder?
I am someone you know very well.
For I am every man you meet
and I am every woman you meet.

Night

by Sara Teasdale

Stars over snow
And in the west a planet
Swinging below a star–
Look for a lovely thing and you will find it,
It is not far–
It will never be far.

Four Leaf Clovers

by Ella Higginson

I know a place where the sun is like gold,
And the cherry blossoms burst with snow,
And down underneath is the loveliest nook,
Where the four-leaf clovers grow.

One leaf is for hope, and one is for faith,
And one is for love, you know,
And God put another in for luck,
-If you search, you will find where they grow.

But you must have hope, and you must have faith,
You must love and be strong
- and so,If you work, if you wait, you will find the place
Where the four-leaf clovers grow.

The Wanderer's Song

by John Masefield

A WIND'S in the heart of me, a fire's in my heels,
I am tired of brick and stone and rumbling wagon-wheels;
I hunger for the sea's edge, the limit of the land,
Where the wild old Atlantic is shouting on the sand.
Oh I'll be going, leaving the noises of the street,
To where a lifting foresail-foot is yanking at the sheet;
To a windy, tossing anchorage where yawls and ketches ride,
Oh I'l be going, going, until I meet the tide.
And first I'll hear the sea-wind, the mewing of the gulls,
The clucking, sucking of the sea about the rusty hulls,
The songs at the capstan at the hooker warping out,
And then the heart of me'll know I'm there or thereabout.
Oh I am sick of brick and stone, the heart of me is sick,
For windy green, unquiet sea, the realm of Moby Dick;
And I'll be going, going, from the roaring of the wheels,
For a wind's in the heart of me, a fire's in my heels.

Life! I know Not What Thou Art

by Anna L. Barbauld

LIFE! I know not what thou art,
But know that thou and I must part;
And when, or how, or where we met,
I own to me 's a secret yet.
But this I know, when thou art fled,
Where'er they lay these limbs, this head,
No clod so valueless shall be
As all that then remains of me.

O whither, whither dost thou fly?
Where bend unseen thy trackless course?
And in this strange divorce,
Ah, tell where I must seek this compound I?
To the vast ocean of empyreal flame
From whence thy essence came
Dost thou thy flight pursue, when freed
From matter's base encumbering weed?
Or dost thou, hid from sight,
Wait, like some spell-bound knight,
Through blank oblivious years th' appointed hour
To break thy trance and reassume thy power?
Yet canst thou without thought or feeling be?
O say, what art thou, when no more thou'rt thee?

Life! we have been long together,
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather;
'Tis hard to part when friends are dear;
Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear;—
Then steal away, give little warning,
Choose thine own time;
Say not Good-night, but in some brighter clime
Bid me Good-morning!

Strange

by Mildred Bowers Armstrong

Strange - to grow up and not be different
Not beautiful, or even very wise...
No winging-out the way of butterflies,
No sudden blindfold-lifting from the eyes,
Strange - to grow up and still be wondering,
Reverent at petals and snow,
Still holding breath,
Still often tiptoe,
Questioning dew and stars,
Wanting to know!

A Little Song of Life

by Lizette Woodworth Reese

A Little Song of Life
GLAD that I live am I;
That the sky is blue;
Glad for the country lanes,
And the fall of dew.
After the sun the rain;
After the rain the sun;
This is the way of life,
Till the work be done.
All that we need to do,
Be we low or high,
Is to see that we grow
Nearer the sky.