Madeleine L'Engle has died.

I was about ten, maybe eleven, when I first read A WRINKLE IN TIME. It's early in my perception of reading fantasy, at least, so I could've been as young as eight or nine. And as I was sitting here reading curtana's tribute, I was becoming slightly frantic, thinking, no, no, that's not it, that's not the *right* poem, that's not the one I remember...

I had not thought of this poem in many, many years, but it was one of two pieces from fantasy novels that I memorized as a child:

At Tara in this fateful hour,
I place all Heaven with its power,
And the sun with its brightness,
And the snow with its whiteness,
And the fire with all the strength it hath,
And the lightning with its rapid wrath,
And the winds with their swiftness along their path,
And the sea with its deepness,
And the rocks with their steepness,
And the earth with its starkness:
All these I place between myself and the powers of darkness!

*Damn*.