To a Writer Dying Young 

It is late, late in the evening. So late, dear reader, that I find it is morning. However you care to measure the time, it matters not to me, for, lately, no matter what the time, I am distracted.

I won”™t write. I won”™t sleep.

What happened to strong will?

It only needs a few revisions...

As my footsteps fall around my room, the words; they thump and beat:

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.

-- Invictus, William Ernest Henley

And I remember that I”™ve been here before;

Wildly unconquerable.

Or, so I thought.

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