Personalizing Poetry

“Come to the edge” by Guillaume Apollinaire, French poet and philosopher 




On jumping into the unknown

“Come to the edge.”

“We can't. We're afraid.”

“Come to the edge.”

“We can't. We will fall!”

“Come to the edge.”

And they came.

And he pushed them. 

And they flew.

"The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost, American poet

On making choices and living by their consequences

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.

“If”, an inspirational poem 
by Rudyard Kipling, English author and poet

Advice on being a man, written to his son


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 wornout 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 breath 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!

“Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”, a villanelle by Dylan Thomas, Welsh poet

Thomas wrote this poem upon seeing his strong father starting to fade away, to become soft. In it he is urging his father to take a stand against death…

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.