I enjoy collecting quotes, poems and words in general. I see words as the building blocks of not only language but culture as well. Here is one one of my favorite poems which resonates deeply within my soul. I am always conflicted when I consider two of the people that used this poem as a source of inspiration. The two people - Nelson Mandela and Timothy McVeigh - could not have been philosophical and historical opposites. Madiba Mandela used the poem to get him through the drudgery of imprisonment; whilst McVeigh used a hand written version of the poem to be his final statement. Madiba - one of the greatest proponents of peaceful resistance and human rights activists of the past century; while McVeigh perpetrated one of the most heinous crimes of the past century that wreaked so much havoc on the American psyche - therein,lies the conflict. How could such men from polar opposites find solace in the same words ... that is why I collect words, quotes, and poems.
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. (William Ernest Henley)
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