8 Motivational poems

When you’re up against a trouble, Meet it squarely, face to face; Lift your chin and set your shoulders, Plant your feet and take a brace. When it’s vain to try to dodge it, Do the best that you can do; You may fail, but you may conquer, See it through! Black may be the clouds about you And your future may seem grim, But don’t let your nerve desert you; Keep yourself in fighting trim. If the worst is bound to happen, Spite of all that you can do, Running from it will not save you, See it through! Even hope may seem but futile, When with troubles you’re beset, But remember you are facing Just what other men have met. You may fail, but fall still fighting; Don’t give up, whate’er you do; Eyes front, head high to the finish. See it through!

You can do the work just by starting it. You can do whatever you want. A bill is drafted on a train to Albany, or in a black limousine. Like how one day I walked the entire length of Manhattan, except I didn’t. I didn’t finish. Not nearly. How could I? Stopped as I was by the boat basin. These credit cards fill with gin and tonic. They pool with the stuff. Maybe I get a little lost sometimes, start thinking I went to Yale. Once I swam to Governors Island, between the ferries and freighters. It was like a job you should’ve seen me quit. Maybe they looked for me. Maybe it wasn’t someone else’s shift, and then it was. Sometimes people are just turnstiles. You have to tell them to keep turning, keep turning into someone else. The rain crashes across a cab, and the road has filled. We’re waterborne. Or whatever the word is for that little moment when the heart lifts. Why don’t you devote yourself the way you once did? It’s an old answer, and an early one. The alarm goes off for a while after it stops. In your face in the bathroom mirror. You play that little song to look at your teeth. My teeth. They haven’t been cared for. The class giggles at my age. This is my hearing. The chances taken on a new face.

For all your days prepare, And meet them ever alike: When you are the anvil, bear— When you are the hammer, strike.

What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist. 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 o’er 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.

The shades of night were falling fast, As through an Alpine village passed A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice, A banner with the strange device, Excelsior! His brow was sad; his eye beneath, Flashed like a falchion from its sheath, And like a silver clarion rung The accents of that unknown tongue, Excelsior! In happy homes he saw the light Of household fires gleam warm and bright; Above, the spectral glaciers shone, And from his lips escaped a groan, Excelsior! "Try not the Pass!" the old man said; "Dark lowers the tempest overhead, The roaring torrent is deep and wide!" And loud that clarion voice replied, Excelsior! "Oh stay," the maiden said, "and rest Thy weary head upon this breast! " A tear stood in his bright blue eye, But still he answered, with a sigh, Excelsior! "Beware the pine-tree's withered branch! Beware the awful avalanche!" This was the peasant's last Good-night, A voice replied, far up the height, Excelsior! At break of day, as heavenward The pious monks of Saint Bernard Uttered the oft-repeated prayer, A voice cried through the startled air, Excelsior! A traveller, by the faithful hound, Half-buried in the snow was found, Still grasping in his hand of ice That banner with the strange device, Excelsior! There in the twilight cold and gray, Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay, And from the sky, serene and far, A voice fell like a falling star, Excelsior!

Don't worry if your job is small, And your rewards are few. Remember that the mighty oak, Was once a nut like you.

Tomorrow is still there waiting uncanceled it doesn't know about today that's the thing about tomorrow

Something better is coming i don't know what but the trajectory says something i keep going