Invictus

People have asked me about my quote ... it's from a poem written in 1875 by William Ernest Henley. Henley was crippled by tuberculosis, and in the hospital he began writing free-verse impressionistic poems. This is one of his more famous ones, and it is titled Invictus, which is Latin for ..unconquered...:

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 budgeonings 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 straight the gait,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.