Invictus
William Ernest Henley’s poem “Invictus” was written in 1875 and published in 1888 in his first volume of poems, “Book of Verses”. Having lost his left leg as a teenager, Henley came close to losing his right leg in his early 20s, but was able to save it thanks to the services of a leading surgeon of the day. He wrote this poem while recovering in the infirmary. The second edition of Henley’s Book of Verses added the dedication “To R. T. H. B.”, referring to Robert Thomas Hamilton Bruce, a successful Scottish flour merchant, baker, and literary patron. The poem was initially published with no title, and was reprinted under various titles in newspapers over the next decade, until 1900, when editor Arthur Quiller-Couch added the title “Invictus” in his “Oxford Book of English Verse”.
William Ernest Henley was born on 23 August 1849 in Gloucester, England, and he died on 11 July 1903 in Woking, England, at the age of 53.As described in Wikipedia, John Keats was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tuberculosis at the age of 25. They were indifferently received in his lifetime, but his fame grew rapidly after his death.
External links:
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.