The Future Cheats Us From Afar

[kismetrose]

These poems have always been rich with resonance; they reflect me, I resound with them. If I had to choose only sections of these works to put to flesh, I'd choose the ones in bold:

William Ernest Henley - Out Of The Night That Covers Me (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.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - from A Psalm of Life

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

George Gordon, Lord Byron - They Say That Hope is Happiness

They say that hope is happiness;
But genuine Love must prize the past,
And Mem'ry wakes the thoughts that bless:
They rose the first - they set the last;

And all that Mem'ry loves the most
Was once our only Hope to be,
And all that Hope adored and lost
Hath melted into Memory.

Alas! It is delusion all;
The future cheats us from afar,
Nor can we be what we recall,
Nor dare we think on what we are.