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
