by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (from The Marriage of Geraint)
Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel and lower the proud;
Turn thy wild wheel through sunshine, storm, and cloud;
Thy wheel and thee we neither love nor hate.
Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel with smile or frown;
With that wild wheel we go not up or down;
Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great.
Smile and we smile, the lords of many lands;
Frown and we smile, the lords of our own hands;
For man is man and master of his fate.
Turn, turn thy wheel above the staring crowd;
Thy wheel and thou are shadows in the cloud;
Thy wheel and thee we neither love nor hate.
* * *
This poem is in honour of my literature class. We've been reading about fickle Fortune and her wheel in The Consolation of Philosophy (by Boethius, a fourth-century Roman Christian).
Although it might seem rather humanist that we are "the lord of our own hands" and "master of his fate," Boethius would actually agree with Tennyson here. We are not in control of what happens to us, but we are in control of what we do, and it is what we do that decides our fate. And as Boethius points out, our actions also decide our happiness. Our happiness should not be set on the things that Fortune can change--money, fame, power, beauty--but rather on eternal things, and over these things Fortune has no jurisdiction.
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