"Unconquerable Souls"

What a day. I'm finally getting around to putting up a Poetry Friday post. I've been watching the memorials and ceremonies and videos all day of 9/11. Eight years later and it's still unbelievable. And the footage from that day is still so hard to watch. I wanted to pass along the poem that was read this morning during the memorial at the Pentagon. It's called 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.