IF 
- Rudyard Kipling

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 worn-out 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!

Morning
by Emily Dickinson
Will there really be a morning?
  Is there such a thing as day?
Could I see it from the mountains
   IF I were a s tall as they?

Has it feet like water-lilies?
  Has it feathers like a bird?
Is it brought from famous countries?
  Of which I have never heard?

Oh, some scholar! Oh, some sailor!
  Oh, some wise man, from the skies!
Please to tell a little pilgrim
  Where the place called morning lies.

"Washing" by John Drinkwater

What is all this washing about,
Every day, week in, week out?
From getting up till going to bed,
I'm tired of hearing the same thing said.
Whether I'm dirty of whether I'm not,
Whether the water is cold or hot,
Whether I like or whether I don't
Whether I will or whether I won't--
"Have you washed your hands,
And washed your face?"
I seem to live in the washing-place.

Whenever I go for a walk or ride,
As soon as I put my nose inside
The door again, there's some one there
With a sponge and soap, and a lot they care
If I have something better to do,
"Now wash your face and your fingers too."

Before a meal is ever begun,
And after ever a meal is done,
It's time to turn on the waterspout.

Please, what is all this washing about?

To Babies

May polar bears welcome you
to northern Manitoba, their lumbering grace
marking the ice. May there still be ice.
May giant trees lean over your path
in warm places, brush your brow.
So many details now disappeared...
tiny toads in deserts, fireflies.
Where are the open window screens,
whispers of breeze against a sleeping cheek?
If we stop poking holes in soil, 
     watching onions grow,
what will we know? If we no longer learn cursive,
will our hand muscles disintegrate?
You blink, beginning to focus.
Where will the lost loops of handwritten "g's"
     and "y's" go?
We dream you will have so much to admire.

Naomi Shihab Nye  Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners

"This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall
Until the bitter weather passes.

Try, as best you can, not to let
The wire brush of doubt
Scrape from your heart
All sense of yourself
And your hesitant light.

If you remain generous,
Time will come good;
And you will find your feet
Again on fresh pastures of promise,
Where the air will be kind
And blushed with beginning.”

― John O'Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings
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