Invictus
A memorable poem about triumph over adversity.
1875
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
Introduction
At twelve, William Henley was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He lost one leg below the knee to the disease in 1868-69, and spent 1873-75 in an Edinburgh infirmary under Joseph Lister’s care. The battering experience drew from Henley one of the most quotable poems in our language, later dedicated to the memory of his friend Robert Hamilton Bruce.
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.
From ‘Poems by William Ernest Henley’ (1921) by W. E. Henley (1849-1903).
* ‘The pit’ is an Old Testament term for the afterlife, from a time when there was no prevailing belief in bodily resurrection or a New Creation: see Psalm 88:1-7. And see also Psalm 131, “Out of the depths have I cried unto thee”.
* Such uncomplaining suffering was a mark of God’s Anointed, in Isaiah 53:7.
* In Orpheus, Robert Herrick (1591-1674) described the hero’s descent into Hades as “his passage through that dreadful shade”. In Stupendous Height of Heavenly Love, Charles Wesley wrote:
And cheer the souls, of death afraid,
And guide them through the dreadful shade.
See also Psalm 23: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil”. Henley’s poem echoes the Psalm in several ways, though there is a serenity in the Psalm that contrasts with Henley’s defiance.
* A reference to Luke 13:24: “Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able”. ‘Strait’ indicates a gate that is narrow, a tight squeeze.
* Possibly a reference to Jeremiah 36:1-14, where the prophet writes all God’s pronouncements against Israel upon a scroll. “It may be” says God through Jeremiah, “that the house of Judah will hear all the evil which I purpose to do unto them; that they may return every man from his evil way; that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin.”