Fuel your ambitions and goals: 10 heartening poems about motivation

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Have you ever found yourself in need of a little inspiration to chase your dreams?

Here are 10 powerful poems about motivation that will remind you of your goals and help you reignite your passion.

Take a moment to find inspiration, and let these verses fuel your goals and ambitions forward.

Let’s get right to it!

My favorite poem about motivation

#1 “If” by Rudyard Kipling

If You Can

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 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!

“If” by Rudyard Kipling stands out as one of my favorite poems about motivation.

Its timeless wisdom offers guidance on resilience, self-trust, and the importance of maintaining composure in adversity.

It encourages us to embrace both triumph and disaster, illustrating that true character is forged in the fire of hardship.

9 more poems about motivation

#2 “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley

I Am The

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 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 punishments the scroll,   
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

#3 “A Psalm of Life” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Lives Of

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
Finds 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.

#4 “Hope is the thing with feathers” by Emily Dickinson

Hope Is

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

#5 “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost

Two Roads

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.

#6 “Dreams” by Langston Hughes

Hold Fast

Hold fast to dreams 
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

#7 “Hope On” by Madison Julius Cawein

Hope On

Hope on, dear Heart, and you will see
The walls of worry fade and flee;
And sane of soul and sound of mind,
You ‘ll go your way of life and find
The paths, once barren, suddenly
In blossom; and from Arcady
The summer wind blow sweet and kind
Hope on, dear Heart.
Think what it ‘d mean to you and me
This life if Hope should cease to be!
If Hope should die what doubts would blind!
What black despairs go unconfined!
What sorrows weight us utterly!
Hope on, dear Heart!

#8 “Never Despair” by Never Despair

When By

Never despair! Let the feeble in spirit
Bow like the willow that stoops to the blast.
Droop not in peril! ’T is manhood’s true merit
Nobly to struggle and hope to the last.
When by the sunshine of fortune forsaken
Faint sinks the heart of the feeble with fear,
Stand like the oak of the forest—unshaken,
Never despair—Boys—oh! never despair.
Never despair! Though adversity rages,
Fiercely and fell as the surge on the shore,
Firm as the rock of the ocean for ages,
Stem the rude torrent till danger is o’er.
Fate with its whirlwind our joys may all sever,
True to ourselves, we have nothing to fear.
Be this our hope and our anchor for ever—
Never despair—Boys—oh! never despair.

#9 “I Am But a Small-Winged Bird” by Sidney Lanier

I Am

I am but a small-winged bird:
But I will conquer the big world
As the bee-martin beats the crow,
By attacking it always from Above.

#10 “The Rainy Day” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

My Life

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

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