Invictus

My trusty laptop is down (dead fan) so I am forced to use my hubby's old one or our ancient dinosaur desktop until my new fan flies in from Hong Kong next month. At the same time I am going back to teaching 7th grade English and reading next week and am exhausted from setting up my classroom. I haven't written and it's driving me crazy!!!

The good news? I watched the movie, "Invictus," with Matt Damon the other night. It's about South Africa and the end of apartheid. In it Nelson Mandela quotes the poem, "Invictus," by William Ernest Henley, who lived from 1849-1903.

The movie was excellent, but it was the poem that caught my eye. (It's the English major in me.) It is an amazing poem made even more inspiring by the fact that Henley wrote this poem while in the hospital after having his leg amputated because of Potts disease. (Tuberculosis of the bone.) This poem inspired a future leader to forgive and to take responsibility for his own destiny and that of his country.

I give you . . . (drumroll) Invictus!

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