Remember

Remember 
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

Remember me when I am gone away,
        Gone far away into the silent land;
        When you can no more hold me by the hand,
    Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
    Remember me when no more day by day
        You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
        Only remember me; you understand
    It will be late to counsel then or pray.
    Yet if you should forget me for a while
      And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
      For if the darkness and corruption leave
      A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
  Better by far you should forget and smile
      Than that you should remember and be sad. 

Invictus: The Unconquerable

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.

When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer

When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
By Walt Whitman

WHEN I heard the learn'd astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and
        measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much
        applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.