1849 W.E. Henley was born on this day. When he died just under 54 years later, so would most of what little reputation he had built up during his lifetime. But every so often a poem, buried in the oblivion of the anthologies, takes off thanks to a wholly unpredictable celebrity boost. W.H. Auden became Beatle-famous when his lament, ‘Funeral Blues’, was featured in the 1994 film Four Weddings and a Funeral.
In January 2010, chance swung a similar spotlight on W.E. Henley and his poem ‘Invictus’. It was mentioned by British prime minister Gordon Brown (‘a battler’, as he informed TV interviewer Andrew Marr) as his inspiration in fighting back the latest of the intra-party plots to unseat him.
On another front, Henley’s poem inspired the title to the 2010 film recording Nelson Mandela’s welding of the new Republic of South Africa on the rugby fields of Johannesburg. Henley’s lines resound through the heart-warming film. (‘Is Invictus based on a book?’ is one of the FAQs on the IMDB website. ‘Yes’, is the astounding answer.)
For posterity Henley was known, if at all, as one of the more memorable of Robert Louis Stevenson’s close acquaintances (they met in a hospital ward), and as the one-legged man who was a principal source for Long John Silver.
Unkindly, one commentator said that Brown’s choosing Henley’s poem ‘is equivalent to choosing “My Way” as a Desert Island Disc … “Invictus” is the sort of poetic anthem that Hitler would have savoured in the bunker as Magda Goebbels poisoned her children and Eva bit into the capsule.’
This is too hard – although one might note that Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma bomber, chose the poem as his final statement to the world before his lethal injection for the murder of 168 fellow Americans in 2001.
Let the poem speak for itself:
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.