By Dr Oliver Tearle

'Invictus' is a famous poem, even to those who haven't heard of information technology. This is because, although the title 'Invictus' may hateful niggling to some (other than, maybe, as the championship of a film – of which more than shortly), and the author of the poem, William Ernest Henley, is not much remembered now, the words which conclude the poem – 'I am the primary of my fate, / I am the captain of my soul' – are well-known. The poem is sufficiently famous to warrant closer attention and analysis.

William Ernest Henley, like his most famous non-famous poem, is somebody whom we both know and don't know. Fifty-fifty those who don't know his proper noun are enlightened of his influence. Henley (1849-1903) was friends with Robert Louis Stevenson, and when Stevenson wrote his first novel, Treasure Island (1883), he was inspired by Henley's distinctive appearance to create the famous fictional pirate. (Henley, who had suffered from tuberculosis from an early historic period, had his left leg amputated below the knee while still a teenager, was the inspiration for Stevenson'due south i-legged pirate.) Henley's girl Margaret was the inspiration for Wendy Darling in J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan. During his lifetime, Henley was a prominent and influential effigy on the literary scene: H. K. Wells dedicated The Fourth dimension Automobile to him and W. Due east. Henley's followers and acolytes were punningly known as 'the Henley Regatta'.

Anyway, here is 'Invictus', and a short summary and analysis of this iconic poem.

Out of the dark that covers me,
Blackness as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may exist
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I take non winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of take chances
My head is bloody, merely unbowed.

Across this identify of wrath and tears
Looms merely 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.

'Invictus', Henley's one poem which is now at all remembered, was written in 1875 when Henley was still in his mid-twenties, was originally published in 1888 without its distinctive title (the Latin for 'unconquered'). Indeed, the title wasn't even Henley'due south thought, but when Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch added the poem to The Oxford Book of English language Verse in 1900, he appended the memorable Latin title. Even today, the title remains far less well-known than that rousing penultimate line, 'I am the master of my fate'.

Invictus: assay of poem

Ane of the most curious things about the verse form is that its stoic message makes no mention of Christianity. This does not hateful, of course, that it is anti-religious or fifty-fifty non-religious, merely that Henley's verse form does not touch upon such things, aside from that casual reference to 'whatever gods may be', which allows for a infidel or polytheistic as well as (perchance even over) a Christian estimation, given the plural 'gods'. In an age where other celebrated William Ernest Henleypoems nigh striving and struggling – Arthur Hugh Clough's 'Say not the struggle nought availeth' beingness a well-known case – tended to hint at the idea that God and heaven were a reward for earthly toil and hardship, Henley places his poem firmly in the hither and now, for all its talk of a 'soul' and 'fate'. Indeed, these things are mentioned only for the poet to assert his say-so and control over them: 'I am the master of my fate, / I am the captain of my soul.' That repeated exclamation of the cocky, and of the self's agency, is an affidavit of Henley'due south autonomy.

And and so consider how the lines 'Beyond this place of wrath and tears / Looms but the Horror of the shade' do not make room for the afterlife ('but the Horror'), suggesting that decease leads to darkness and cypher more. Yet life, also, tin be a realm of black and darkness: 'Out of the night that covers me, / Black as the pit from pole to pole.' Is this black 'night' a reference to depression? 'Invictus' seems to be not merely near coping with a concrete condition – the loss of a leg at a immature age, attributable to tuberculosis – but a mental one, too. If depression makes one feel that ane has lost control over one's life, the assertion in the final two lines of 'Invictus' are a proclamation that the poet intends to accept back self-control, or at least announce his determined endeavor to do so.

The poem introduced a couple of famous phrases into the language: 'bloody, simply unbowed', and the final two lines: 'I am the master of my fate: / I am the captain of my soul.' Like Kipling's 'If', it became popular with readers and has remained reasonably popular considering it offers a stoic approach to life's hardships.

Henley by all accounts exuded a masculine strength and vigour (and had a large cherry bristles and a hearty laugh – a sort of Victorian Brian Blessed, we might say). Although information technology often doesn't pay to exist too reductive in terms of offering a biographical analysis of poetry, 'Invictus' was almost certainly inspired – at to the lowest degree in office – by Henley's loss of the lower half of his left leg: he would remain 'unbowed' and 'unconquered' past this concrete setback. Clint Eastwood'southward 2009 motion-picture show about the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa is named Invictus after the poem, and for good reason: Nelson Mandela recited the verse form to his swain prisoners while he was incarcerated on Robben Island.

The writer of this commodity, Dr Oliver Tearle, is a literary critic and lecturer in English at Loughborough University. He is the writer of, among others, The Underground Library: A Book-Lovers' Journey Through Curiosities of History and The Great War, The Waste material Land and the Modernist Long Poem.

Image: William Ernest Henley, fromThe Story of the House of Cassell(1922), Wikimedia Commons.