In the late 1980’s I was reading a lot of poetry. Very soon after I began writing poems. I recently started collecting the ones that inspired me in my journal again after all these years. I hope you like them.
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 back,
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 travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
-Robert Frost
The Man in the Glass
When you get what you want in your struggle for wealth
And the world makes you King for a Day
Just go to the mirror and look at yourself
And see what that man has to say.
For it isn’t your father, or mother or wife
Whose judgment on you must pass,
The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life
It’s the one staring back from the glass.
Some people may think you are a straight shooting chum
And call you a wonderful guy,
But the man in the glass says you’re only a bum,
If the can’t look him straight in the eye.
He’s the fellow to please, never mind all the rest,
For he’s with you clear up to end,
And you have passed your most difficult test
If the man in the glass is your friend.
You may fool the whole world down the pathway of life
And get pats on the back as you pass.
But your final reward will be heartaches and tears
If you have cheated the man in the glass.
-Dale Wimbrow
Shakespeare said the same thing in a fewer words, “To thine own self be true.”
Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be,
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 & 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 punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.
-W.E. Henley
Do you have a favorite poem? Send one to me! Pass them on.
There is magic and inspiration in them…
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