The best that I’ve ever read!
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
Never in life have I actually understood an English poem. Let alone like it. English poems felt too shallow. For I never reckoned the abysmal depth of the language. I never truly acknowledged the power of words and their profound implications. But with this verse, I seemed to have got something out of it. Coz I fell in love with it from the moment I saw the title and read thru and between the lines. Falling deeper for my ‘the’ most cherished English verse!
The Last Straw 