English essay

Invictus By William Ernest Henley

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.

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Written in 1875 and published in 1888, this poem was retrieved from the Poetry Foundation

website at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/51642 on 26

November 2016.

Nelson Mandela—the world famous political activist, Nobel Peace Prize Winner, political

prisoner for 27 years, who later became President of South Africa in the 1990s—claimed that

this poem kept him alive while in prison and that he recited it from memory to other prisoners as

inspiration to keep going. (Claims in this sentence are from the Open Culture website in a

segment labeled “Morgan Freeman Masterfully Recites Nelson Mandela’s Favorite Poem,

‘Invictus’” published on 18 December 2013 at http://www.openculture.com/2013/12/morgan-

freeman-masterfully-recites-nelson-mandelas-favorite-poem-invictus.html and retrieved the

same day as the poem.)