When Henley wrote of the indomitability of the human spirit, he wrote from his own experience. He suffered all his life from a painful bone disease that resulted in the amputation of one of his feet, but he was still able to graduate from Oxford with honors and go on to a notable career as a writer. The title of the poem is the Latin word for “unconquered.”

INVICTUS

William Ernest Henley

(1849–1903)

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.