Invictus.

"Invictus", by William Ernest Henley, a British poet who lived between 1849-9013. A poem which achieved notoriety a few years ago, because Tim McVeigh (executed for the federal building boming in Oklahoma in 1995), left a handwritten note with the above poem, on the morning of his execution day. He had no other last words...

In itself, a good poem...as follows...

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit fom pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For the unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeoning 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.