Sunday, 17 January 2021

Donatella du Plessis : part four

When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author?

Invictus, by William Ernest Henry. I know it’s a cliché, but when I’m feeling depressed, I don’t have much time for worrying about a poem’s reputation, only for how it’s going to make me feel, and there are few things more comforting than that final stanza:

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.

I also like to take refuge in works that are so familiar to me that I feel as safe inside them as I do in my own home. I feel this way about Shakespeare and Jane Austen.

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