10 Poetry Tattoo Ideas: Words That Will Stay With You Forever

Sometimes you come across a poem or a verse that you want to etch in your memory forever. Poetry has this effect on us—this heart-piercing ability to make us feel connected, loved and seen. And what better way to emulate the permanency these words have on our souls than with a tattoo? 

 

Here are ten popular poetry tattoos to inspire you the next time you feel the need for some new ink.

 

I wish to weep

but sorrow is

stupid.

I wish to believe

but belief is a

graveyard.

―Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

 

 

 

 

Just like the moons and like the suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like the hopes springing high,

Still I’ll rise.

—Maya Angelou, Still I Rise

 

 

 

 

 

 

And were an epitaph to be my story I’d have a short one ready for my own.

I would have written of me in stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

—Robert Frost, The Lesson for Today

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Her heart was wild

but I didn’t want to catch it

I wanted to run with it

to set mine free.

—Atticus, Wild Heart

 

 

 

 

 

 

Out of the ash

I rise with my red hair

And I eat men like air.

—Sylvia Plath, Lady Lazarus

 

 

 

 

 

I have loved the stars too fondly

to be fearful of the night

—Sarah Williams, The Old Astronomer to His Pupil

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To strive, to seek,

to find and not to yield

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

—T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

 

 

 

 

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune–without the word,

And never stops at all,

And the 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.

—Emily Dickinson, Hope is the Thing With Feathers

 

and here you are living

despite it all

―Rupi Kaur, The Sun and Her Flowers