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Courage

Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace,
The soul that knows it not
Knows no release from little things:

Knows not the livid loneliness of fear,
Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear
The sound of wings.

How can Life grant us boon of living, compensate
For dull gray ugliness and pregnant hate
Unless we dare

The soul's dominion? Each time we make a choice, we pay
With courage to behold resistless day
And count it fair

By: Amelia Earhart

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Believe Me

Believe me, it was often thus;
In solitary cells, on winter nights
A sudden sense of joy and warmth
And a resounding note of love,
And then, unsleeping, I would know
A-huddle by an icy wall:
Someone is thinking of me now,
Petitioning the Lord for me.
My dear ones, thank you all
Who did not falter, who believed in us!
In the most fearful prison hour
We probably would not have passed
Through everything-from end to end,
Our heads held high, unbowed-
Without your valiant hearts
To light out path.

By: Irina Ratushinskaya

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from What Are Years

What is our innocence,
what is our guilt? All are
naked, none is safe. And whence
is courage: the unanswered question, the resolute doubt-
dumbly calling, deafly listening - that
in misfortune, even death,
encourages others
and in its defeat, stirs

the soul to be strong?

By: Marianne Moore

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I Am Not Bound to Win

I am not bound to win,
But I am bound to be true.
I am not bound to succeed,
But I am bound to live up to what light I have.
I must stand with anybody that stands right;
Stand with him while he is right,
And part with him when he goes wrong.

By: Abraham Lincoln