So be my passing! / My task accomplished and the long day done, / My wages taken, and in my heart / Some late lark singing,
The poem’s title is Latin for “to my sister Margaret”. These are its closing lines, which go on to ask to be “gathered to the quiet west”, a death imagined as the end of a working day.
I am the master of my fate, / I am the captain of my 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.
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.
All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players;
Because I could not stop for Death – / He kindly stopped for me –
Break, break, break, / On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! / And I would that my tongue could utter / The thoughts that arise in me.