Some words speak to us so much that they remain etched in our memory forever. Poetry has that effect as it tears through our soul and makes a permanent place in us.

Here are 13 inspiring tattoos that pay a tribute to poetry and all that it does for us.

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I have loved the stars too fondly

to be fearful of the night

– The Old Astronomer by Sarah Williams

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

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

– “The Lesson for Today” by Robert Frost

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Do not go gentle into that good night

rage against the dying of the light

“Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas

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To strive, to seek,

to find and not to yield.

“Ulysses” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

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O remember

in your narrowing dark hours,

that more things move

than blood in the heart.

“Night” by Louise Bogan

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You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake.

“AntiLamentation” by Dorianne Laux

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I made my song a coat

Covered with embroideries

Out of old mythologies

From heel to throat;

But the fools caught it,

Wore it in the world’s eyes

As though they’d wrought it.

Song, let them take it

For there’s more enterprise

In walking naked.

“A Coat” by William Butler Yeats

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I should have been a pair of ragged claws. 

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot

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But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost

The Sun

 I carry your heart with me (I carry it in

my heart) I am never without it

“I carry your heart with me (I carry it in)” by E. E. Cummings

Atticus Poetry

Her heart was wild

but I didn’t want to catch it

I wanted to run with it

to set mine free.

“Wild Heart” By Atticus 

There is a charge

For the hearing of my heart——

It really goes.

Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath