Invictus
9
Jan1
Jan1
I cannot believe it took a Hollywood film to lead me to discover it, but this poem that Mandela carried with him on Ellis Island stands up in my mind aside Teddy Roosevelt’s “Man in the Arena” speech as one of the most powerful messages of courage in the face of adversity.
- 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.
~William Ernest Henley, 1849–1903, original
4:45 am on January 11th, 2010
Some have told me that they do not actually know the Man in the Arena quote. I must say the entire speech is interesting to the historians amongst us (http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/trsorbonnespeech.html), but the quote I love is:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”