To bear all sweetly, hoping still to cry
'How beautiful it is to be alive!'

Thus ever towards man's height of nobleness
Strive still some new progression to contrive:
Till, just as any other friend's, we press
Death's hand; and, having died, feel none the less
How beautiful it is to be alive,

William Ernest Henley (1849-1903)

Ο

Invictus

UT 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 unbow'd.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,

Robert Louis Stevenson

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.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

U

Requiem

NDER the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie:
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he long'd to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.