It's back ...

... Invictus Redivivus � The Dabbler.

I remember being stirred by "Invictus" when I first read it, sometime in my mid-teens. But now, when I read it - and knowing full well that the "clutch of circumstance" Henley refers to involved real suffering, worse than I have ever experienced - it no longer has that effect. I admire its technique, honor its candor and courage, but I just don't feel that way anymore. My own sense of things, the older I get - and I am at an age where old means old - is nearer to what Eliot says in "East Coker":

The only wisdom we can hope to acquire

Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.