Henley has it all wrong,
insisting that we can master FATE.
Short-term? Perhaps. Never for long.
“Count no man happy, 'til he be dead,”
Herodotus said Solon's alleged to have said.
Hamlet's “fardels” — that's bundles to us.
Approach or avoid? Analyze and discuss.
Why are we here? We MUST be important.
(Or was our creation God being mordant?)
Man IS the measure, id est the ruler.
(Who needs a God who lives to fool ya?)
Philosophers along with makers of verse
see us as central to the universe,
failing to grasp that we human beings
are mere extras in the crowd scenes.
——————————
* Invictus
by William Ernest Henley
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.
