1 EAGLETON NOTES: All Mixed Up

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Monday 25 July 2011

All Mixed Up

I'm afraid that everything 'real' life has interfered with my Blogland life over the last week but I'm snatching a few minutes to say that I'm hoping to get back to posting soon.  However things will be all over the place and my posts may bear absolutely no relation to where I am or what I'm doing at that moment.  Nevertheless I shall continue bloody but unbowed.

Now, I thought to myself, where does that come from?  I recalled that it was from a poem but by whom?  Of course Google supplied the answer.  What did we do before Google?  Who uses any other search engine?  I used to use different ones at different times but now to me search = Google.  Apart from Yahoo and Ask Jeeves (is that still alive?) I'm not sure I can actually name another off the top of my head.  I just Googled it.  Hmmm.  Interesting.

Anyway as I was saying I just Googled the saying 'bloody but unbowed' and discovered that I actually knew the poem from which it came:

INVICTUS*

William Ernest Henley, 1849-1903

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






* translated as unconquered or unconquerable








1 comment:

  1. I hope "the bludgeonings of chance" have not literally been too severe and bloody just lately...

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