Trees by Joyce Kilmer

Download this as PDF Trees, Invictus, Thinking

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed against the earth’s sweet flowing breast

A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may, in Summer, wear a nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

Thinking, by Walter D. Wintle

If you think you are beaten, you are, If you think you dare not, you don’t.

If you like to win, but you think you can’t, it is almost certain you won’t. If you think you’ll lose, you’re lost.

For out in the world we find, Success begins with a fellow’s will: It’s all in the state of mind.

If you think you’re outclassed, you are; You’ve got to think high to rise, You’ve got to be sure of yourself before you can ever win a prize.

Life’s battles, don’t always go to the stronger or faster man, But sooner or later the man who wins is the man who thinks he can!

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.