If you can’t imagine anyone else in the world being your dad, this poem by Christina M. Kerschen may resonate with you. The bond you create with your dad is so special, and the beautiful words in this poem perfectly encapsulate that bond.

When I was a baby,

you would hold me in your arms.

I felt the love and tenderness, keeping me safe from harm.

I would look up into your eyes, and all the love I would see.

How did I get so lucky?

You were the dad chosen for me.

There is something special about a father's love.

Seems it was sent to me from someplace up above.

Our love is everlasting.

I just wanted you to know that you're my special hero, and I wanted to tell you so.

You’ve probably heard this line (or something similar) from Fenton Johnson’s poem “To My Father” before: “My love for thee is boundless as the soul’s eternal sea.” These are beautiful words to frame or write in a card, especially if your father considers the ocean his second home.

Good Father o’ the Dusk,

my love for thee Is boundless as the soul’s eternal sea;

Thou wrought for me when I was weak and young,

And guarded me from life’s tempestuous wrong.

Thou art the lamp that safely pilots me

Beyond the crags and shoals of life’s rough sea;

I cannot falter when thou bidst me go

Where moonlit waters to the ocean flow.

Let others boast of gold and mansions grand,

No father lives throughout this Western land

So good, so true, so brave of heart as thee,

My mariner across the starlit sea.

Sometimes brevity is the best way to make your point and that’s the case with this short poem by Dakota Ellerton. Seeing the world through a dad’s eyes can be transformative for a child. Just as this verse says.

My father

My father

Made me see

How beautiful this world can really be.

Want to make your dad get a little teary-eyed? Try this poem on for size. It paints a picture of all the ways a father cares for his children and loves them regardless. Dear old Dad might even want to frame this, so consider printing it on stock paper for him to keep.

God once made a father

his best one of all

he was smart loving and determined

to come when his kids called

This father could be serious

he would sometimes get mad

but he was forgiving

when you did something bad

This father could be silly

he would tell many jokes

he could be quite annoying

when he gave tickles and pokes

God gave him to someone

but who could it be?

This very lucky person

turned out to be me.

English Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling wrote these final stanzas of his poem "If—" in 1895. It's written as a letter to a son and gives advice on how to manage life. And, fun fact, the stanza "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster / and treat those two impostors just the same" are written on the wall of the players' entrance to the Centre Court where Wimbledon is held.

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!

Charleston, South Carolina's poet laureate Marcus Amaker recently became a father, and his poem "Sleep When the Baby Sleeps" is a touching tribute to his baby girl that also tackles all the new parent experiences of worry. For a new dad, this poem would certainly touch a chord with verses like:

“Sleep when the baby sleeps,”

they say.

As if sleeping is a switch easily turned on.

Especially when all of your mind’s power is being used for the electricity of fatherhood.

This one's a tear-jerker if that's what you're after. Helen Steiner Rice opens with the words:

Fathers are wonderful people

So little understood,

And we do not sing their praises

as often as we should…

The poem goes on to detail all the ways dads are wonderful and how easy it is for their families to overlook how sweet they can be.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox was an American Victorian poet; you're probably familiar with her words: "Laugh and the world laughs with you, Weep, and you weep alone."

Her poem "Father" is perfect for this holiday:

He never made a fortune, or a noise

In the world where men are seeking after fame;

But he had a healthy brood of girls and boys

Who loved the very ground on which he trod.

They thought him just little short of God;

Oh you should have heard the way they said his name –‘Father.’

From his 1976 album Songs in the Key of Life, if this Stevie Wonder song doesn't make you think of the unconditional love between a father and his child, we don't know what will:

As now can't reveal the mystery of tomorrow

But in passing will grow older every day

Just as all is born is new

Do know what I say is true

That I'll be loving you always

Until the rainbow burns the stars out in the sky (always)

Until the ocean covers every mountain high (always)

Until the dolphin flies and parrots live at sea (always)

Until we dream of life and life becomes a dream

Walt Whitman uses the stars in the sky to illustrate the bond between the father and his daughter in his poem “On the Beach at Night.” When she cries he soothes her with these words:

Weep not, child, Weep not, my darling,

With these kisses let me remove your tears,

The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,

They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition,

Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge,

Country music is full of songs about daddies and their kids, but you don't have to be a big country fan to appreciate the sentiment behind this tune that'll put a big lump in Dad's throat. It's George Strait's “Love Without End, Amen.” Released in 1990, the song goes,

Let me tell you a secret about a father's love

A secret that my daddy said was just between us

He said daddies don't just love their children every now and then

It's a love without end, amen

Anne Bradstreet was a prominent Puritan poet in the American colonies and so this poem has that flavor, but the devotion to her dad still rings true. She basically says that everything she has and has accomplished, she owes to him.

Most truly honored, and as truly dear

If worth in me or ought I do appear

Who can of right better demand the same

Than may your worthy self from whom it came?

Sir Ronald Ross, a British doctor, may have gained acclaim for discovering the malarial parasite carried by the mosquito while working in India in 1895, but in his spare time he dabbled in poetry. In this touching piece he writes of what a father and son give to one another.

Come with me then, my son;

Thine eyes are wide for truth:

And I will give thee memories,

And thou shalt give me youth.

The lake laps in silver,

The streamlet leaps her length:

And I will give thee wisdom,

And thou shalt give me strength.

American poet Li-Young Lee’s “The Gift” describes the tenderness of a dad removing a splinter and the greater life lesson his care imparts to his son. For dads who show their strength through gentle acts of kindness, this is a stirring choice to share on Father’s Day.

To pull the metal splinter from my palm

my father recited a story in a low voice.

I watched his lovely face and not the blade.

Before the story ended, he’d removed

the iron sliver I thought I’d die from.

I can’t remember the tale,

but hear his voice still, a well

of dark water, a prayer.

And I recall his hands,

two measures of tenderness

he laid against my face,

the flames of discipline

he raised above my head.

Japanese American poet Lawson Fusao Inada was the fifth poet laureate of Oregon and a master of his craft. In his poem “My Father and Myself Facing the Sun,” he expresses the differences between a man and his father but at the same time the legacy his Dad has created in himself and his own children and how that’s worth respecting and cherishing.

Come. It is in the eyes, the face, the way

we would greet you stumbling as you arrive.

He is much the smooth, grass-brown slopes

reaching knee-high around you as you walk;

I am the cracks of cliffs and gullies,

pieces of secret deep in the back of the eye.

But he is still my father, and I his son.

In his poem “My Father Moved Through Dooms of Love,” the poet e.e. cummings paints a picture of a man who faced his challenges headlong and managed to endure them to become a whole person. He’s not perfect but he’s an example of how to embrace one’s own humanity.

joy was his song and joy so pure

a heart of star by him could steer

and pure so now and now so yes

the wrists of twilight would rejoice

keen as midsummer’s keen beyond

conceiving mind of sun will stand,

so strictly (over utmost him

so hugely) stood my father’s dream

If your dad was your protector (maybe even to a fault), then you might appreciate poet Leslie Monsour’s verses about her dad striking fear into the hearts of her potential suitors. Certainly Dad will appreciate the humor as well.

The boys who fled my father's house in fear

Of what his wrath would cost them if he found

Them nibbling slowly at his daughter's ear,

Would vanish out the back without a sound,

And glide just like the shadow of a crow,

To wait beside the elm tree in the snow.

Something quite deadly rumbled in his voice.

He sniffed the air as if he knew the scent

Of teenage boys, and asked, "What was that noise?"

Then I'd pretend to not know what he meant,

Stand mutely by, my heart immense with dread,

As Father set the traps and went to bed.

Whether you want something heartfelt or hearty-laugh inducing, these poems should get your started on your search for the just the write words to tell Dad how much you love him.