Invictus
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.
Text: William Ernest Henley, Poems (David Nutt, London, 1904), "Echoes" IV, "I. M. R. T. Hamilton Bruce", p. 119 · source (opens in a new tab)
Public domain. First published in A Book of Verses, 1888.
About the poem
William Ernest Henley (1849–1903)
First published: A Book of Verses, 1888, untitled; titled "Invictus" by Arthur Quiller-Couch in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1900.
In a time of anxious headlines and private struggles, Invictus says the hard thing simply: we can't choose what happens to us, only how we face it. Its closing lines are still reached for by people going through the worst.
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