Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley

This was a favourite of my mother's... In fact it's the only poem in English I can remember her quoting.
I think William Ernest Henley had a slightly harder life than she did, if Wikipædia is to be believed.
But all of us sometimes need to talk up our own courage.

I derive a certain amount of amusement from the efforts made by some Christians to annex this poem.
It is quite striking that a deeply felt poem such as this—by a Victorian Englishman dammit—should
be so entirely free of any of the Christian apparatus that was so fashionable at the time. Gods there may
be, but they don't seem to be there for Mr Henley when he might need them.

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