Invictus

Tonight I am not feeling well and I feel slightly blue. For that reason I thought I would forgo a long blog entry and instead post one of my favourite poems. It is "Invictus" by William Ernest Henley. Henley was an English poet and dramaticist who lived from 1849 top 1903. He collaborated with Robert Louis Stevenson on several plays and published no less than six books of poetry. The last one, In Hospital, included his most famous work, "Invictus (which means "unconquered" in Latin)." The poem is essentially a statement of the stiff upper lip mentality that characterised England during the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

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.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud,
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

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.