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Ambition
We’re dipping our toes in the paddling pool
__When we ought to be tackling the seas.
There’s no point at all in thinking so small
__With the water just up to our knees.
We need to be braver, go deeper, work out
__What to think, where to go, how to be.
There’s a lot we must do, many aims to pursue,
__Inhibitions we need to set free.
We can never give up chasing rainbows each day
__If we want to achieve our desires.
We must do what it takes—get things right, make mistakes.
__Whatever the outcome requires.
So forget that small pool. Set your sights on the sun,
__The horizon, the stars and the sky.
Feel the warmth on your face, love the heat of the chase.
__Learn to swim, learn to run, learn to fly.
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Siân Marlow is a translator living in Reading, UK.
An exhortation to work hard and dream big, but most of all to keep on trying.
A fine message, well put across, Siân.
I love the message, the meter, and the rhyme. Great job – thanks for sharing!
“Ambition” is a beautiful composition that seemed to flow with each line and had a wonderful rhyme. The message of leaving our comfort zone and getting out in the big wide world to accomplish something we never thought possible is wonderfully refreshed.
A very enjoyable poem and message. Thank you Sian.
I love the inspirational message.
The poem sings.
There is a very intricate metrical and rhyming scheme in this perfect little poem. Notice that it alternates between tetrameter and trimeter, but in fact each tetrameter-trimeter pair might be considered a single heptameter line. If the poet had laid out the lines in that way, it would be a series of eight rhymed couplets.
Also, he makes use of internal rhyme in the four lines 3, 7, 11, and 15. (The rhymes are “all…small”, “do…pursue”, “takes…mistakes”, “face…chase”). But he avoids a metronomic monotony by separating each of these internal-rhyme lines by three lines that do not do so.
His use of the comparison of a small pool to the sea, linking it with theme of limited hopes versus soaring ambition, is neat, perfectly developed, and clicks like the racked slide on an automatic pistol.
This poem has the precise inner workings of a Swiss watch.
I’ll second that.
A person’s success is almost entirely up to his desire to set goals, learn from mistakes, and never stop trying. Great Poem!
Thank you for this positive poem; positive and carefully constructed. This is what our schools need — not the biarte stuff children are getting today.
Thanks..
What is “biarte?”
Probably “bizarre.”
This metrically musical piece in first person plural sings to an unspecified group, perhaps composed of each human person. It’s psychological encouragement to grow up, yet there is a curious lack of goal–an unmentioned word that might be expected in a poem like this. Rather, we hear of aims and desires, outcomes and freeing ourselves of inhibitions. The final line suggests learning ways to make progress, but does not name any achievement. Getting things right and making mistakes are equalized, along with the impossible task of chasing rainbows. The speaker speaks of larger and higher things, and does move beyond the pool to seas, sun, stars, sky, but an active attitude rather than the accomplishment is praised. The transcendence of the goal is so much admired that it remains unspeakable. This unspokenness is a difficult thing to maintain, and represents an achievement in itself.
Siân, I love the rhyme, rhythm, and the glorious message in this gem of a poem that has my spirits soaring with the eagles. Thank you!
Thank you all for your kind words! I’m really pleased to be sharing my work with you, and I hope to share more going forward. I love reading all your poems on here.