Ronbo and I were talking on the phone about stress and he referenced the last two lines of a poem and they question arose, “Who wrote it?” Well, it was a fellow named Henley . . . William Ernest, 1849-1903. Wikipedia gives an explanation of the genesis of the poem and I have cited it below.

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 gait,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.^[1]

From Wikipedia:

Henley’s literary reputation rests almost entirely on this single poem.^[6] In 1875 one of Henley’s legs required amputation due to complications arising from tuberculosis. Immediately after the amputation he was told that his other leg would require a similar procedure. He chose instead to enlist the services of the distinguished surgeon Joseph Lister, who was able to save Henley’s remaining leg after multiple surgical interventions on the foot.^[7]

While recovering in the infirmary, he was moved to write the verses that became “Invictus”. This period of his life, coupled with recollections of an impoverished childhood, were primary inspirations for the poem, and play a major role in its meaning.^[8]

Influence

• C. S. Lewis included a quote from the last stanza in Book 5, chapter 3 of his early autobiographical work The Pilgrim’s Regress (1933).
• In a speech to the House of Commons on 9 September 1941, Winston Churchill paraphrased the last two lines of the poem, stating “We are still masters of our fate. We still are captain of our souls.”^[9]
• In the 1942 film Casablanca, Captain Renault, an official played by Claude Rains, recites the last two lines of the poem when talking to Rick Blaine, played by Humphrey Bogart, referring to his power in Casablanca.
• In the 1942 film Kings Row, Parris Mitchell, a psychiatrist played by Robert Cummings, recites the first two stanzas of “Invictus” to his friend Drake McHugh, played by Ronald Reagan, before revealing to Drake that his legs were unnecessarily amputated by a cruel doctor.

Robert and I, like the famous two ships – only in the daylight and not on an ocean and, actually in a kitchen – passed. Hmmn, really, the comparison with the well-known two ships passing is almost lame enough to go back and delete, but I’ve typed it and what would I type in its place.

I glanced over as he passed and told him to stop, that I wanted to take a picture, and I did.

His eyes show some fatigue, but after the past few days that’s to be expected. My mother thought he looked a bit like his great-great grandfather Wesley Wisler, but I don’t know.

I think it was about 44 years ago that I sat on the end of a sofa in Sacramento and read Caesar and Christ, by Will Durant. I was particularly struck by the prose of the first paragraph of the epilogue:

“THE two greatest problems in history,” says a brilliant scholar of our time, are “how to account for the rise of Rome, and how to account for her fall.”¹ We may come nearer to understanding them if we remember that the fall of Rome, like her rise, had not one cause but many, and was not an event but a process spread over 300 years. Some nations have not lasted as long as Rome fell.

I am thinking of this now because yesterday I read and then wrote about the movie, The Fall of Rome. My first impulse was to look for the film and then, as I remembered the above paragraph, to re-read all the volumes of his Story of Civilization. Tabloids are juicier and I scan them at grocery stores, although now I don’t recognize too many of the “famous” names. Well-written novels are fascinating, like a song in your head. This multi-volume set of history, however, makes you feel as if you could reach beyond yourself. Its effect is like listening to Amazing Grace in a church setting. I feel odd saying it, but you feel cleaner.

Occasionally, I will look at websites which list things – all the way from bad plastic surgery to deadly reptiles of Australia. Believe me, there is a lot of stuff that falls in the middle and stuff that hangs off both sides. Today, one thing led to another and I found myself  looking at the some of the biggest losers in epic films.

The Fall of the Roman Empire – not to be confused with Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which of course one reads and does not watch –  caught my attention. As you can see, if you clicked on the link, it is considered a good film and has actors the caliber of Alec Guinness, who had a famous role in a movie about another empire.

Now, of course, I have decided I have to see this film, and so the search will begin. Oh, how I wish I could walk into the Beavercreek, Ohio GoodWill (across from City Barbecue) and find a VHS copy. That store has a lot of historical films on the shelves, probably because it is close to a university.

I haven’t started an Internet search; maybe it won’t be difficult at all. Actually, it would seem likely I have already seen it since it was made in 1964, right in the middle of my high school years – when students still took Latin and dressed up in togas on Latin Day. But I don’t remember. I do remember taking part in a vocabulary contest at one Latin Day and watching Quo Vadis at another. (Robert Taylor, as in Waterloo Bridge – as if everyone were as old as I. Heavens, I am giggling at myself.

Oh, my goodness. I am going to go and vote in May at some precinct place I haven’t figured out because they consolidated voting places and the Methodist Church is no longer an option.  That is the least of my concerns when it comes to the primary, however.  It seems surreal, this political year. Somehow, I need to figure out a plan before this fateful Tuesday . . . and it’s looking unlikely that I will reach a decision with which I am comfortable. Too bad Rose is not running.

I think I had snow on my mulch pile about a week ago, and yesterday I mowed the front yard – with my mother’s electric mower. It does all right, but the cord business can get a little tricky. We had a hedge trimming accident with one of my really long cords and the other was wound up so neatly, I was loathe to mess it up.

I thought to myself that I would just be trying the mower out for this summer’s use and opted for a short cord. After figuring out that the breaker in the garage for the plug I was using needed to be reset, I gave the mower a try. It started,  which was good, but then committed me to a test mow strip. And then I thought I’d do another and so on. Soon I needed another cord and attached a short one. This happened twice more and the last time around I was in the position of the plug ends  not being compatible, so I wound up unwinding my neatly wound cord. A little ironic, dontcha know.

It turned out the dandelions were really short and the mower whirled above them; it was frustrating, but at least the yard did not look like an expanse of bumps. I am planning on doing the back yard today and maybe even starting a fire when it gets toward evening. And I will be mulching more – strange how that hovers around the back of my memory and every now and then pokes my mind with a maniacal laugh.

LZP sent pictures of spring in Iowa: I sent back a picture of dandelions. Maybe I will be able to make wine, at least.

I have to get out there and start mulching and sweating and mowing and sweating before I take a shower – or maybe I could just spend the next few days greasy,  grimy and gritty. Sometimes I wish I had an “AmeliaJake Wash” – not unlike a car wash. I could just stand there and be wet, soaped, rinsed and dried. I don’t know about the buffing option.

The Sam Vance smile, which is featured below (and has got to be a movie star friendly caliber smile) got me thinking about other smiles. Here are a few

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And, of course, Shane smiling at Quentin:

Every now and then I click through some of the pages of the younger generation. This is Sam Vance; isn’t that a good, strong name?

Now, I’d like to say “my nephew” but I feel guilty about pretending to have any of the genes that came together to make this great smile and cheerful face.

Sam is a musician who plays with a Band Dividing the Masses – I think it’s Christian rock and for a while I believe Sam was interested in the ministry. I guess he’s got a fan club of female admirers; I can see why.

It must have rained last night because the driveway was wet this morning; the air damp. All day long you could smell the rain in the air, but it was capricious, a little now, a little later. Finally, a weather alert came up, but it was for the northern central part of the county and we are the northern eastern. That does not mean that we get Nor’easters, however. This time we got a bit of thunder and a darkened sky and a squall of rain. No lightning.

I was a typhoon on the porch, however, unending furniture and vacuuming spaces that had not seen the light of day in ages. I emptied travel totes out on the floor and then vacuumed up what I did not retrieve; that got a little tiresome. I would find things and put them on one end of the table, shoving them over as I found more things, until they fell off the other end. Sigh.

I have wet mulch outside and it will be heavy tomorrow.

Now for an important activity: I set my phone alarm for 8:53 pm in case I doze off and am not awake to get a Kroger worker. I think that earns another sigh.