William Ernest Henley's "Invictus"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 18 April 2024

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today’s poem–benign anthem of the resilient human spirit or a hymn to radical autonomy?–has divided audiences for more than a century.

Born in Gloucester, England, poet, editor, and critic William Ernest Henley was educated at Crypt Grammar School, where he studied with the poet T.E. Brown, and the University of St. Andrews. His father was a struggling bookseller who died when Henley was a teenager. At age 12 Henley was diagnosed with tubercular arthritis that necessitated the amputation of one of his legs just below the knee; the other foot was saved only through a radical surgery performed by Joseph Lister. As he healed in the infirmary, Henley began to write poems, including “Invictus,” which concludes with the oft-referenced lines “I am the master of my fate; / I am the captain of my soul.” Henley’s poems often engage themes of inner strength and perseverance. His numerous collections of poetry include A Book of Verses (1888), London Voluntaries (1893), and Hawthorn and Lavender (1899).

Henley edited the Scots Observer (which later became the National Observer), through which he befriended writer Rudyard Kipling, and the Magazine of Art, in which he lauded the work of emerging artists James McNeill Whistler and Auguste Rodin. Henley was a close friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, who reportedly based his Long John Silver character in Treasure Island in part on Henley.

-bio via Poetry Foundation

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.
0:04.8	I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Thursday, April 18th, 2024.
0:10.3	Today's poem is by William Ernest Henley, and it's called Invictus.
0:14.9	I'll read it once, offer a few comments, and then read it one more time.
0:22.2	Invictus.
0:32.0	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
0:40.4	of chance my head is bloody but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears looms but the horror of the
0:48.0	shade. And yet the menace of the years finds and shall find me unafraid.
0:55.5	It matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll,
1:00.8	I am the master of my fate.
1:03.1	I am the captain of my soul.
1:09.9	In his youth, Henley was forced to have one of his legs amputated, and in middle age, he was told that his other leg would probably suffer the same fate.
1:22.6	Unbowed and unwilling to accept that diagnosis.
1:29.1	He sought out a second opinion and a special surgeon to perform experimental operations on his foot.
1:39.7	They were a success, and he got to keep his leg.
1:44.8	While he recovered from those series of operations, he wrote this poem.
1:53.8	And it presents a mixed attitude about his fate.
2:00.4	On the one hand, it expresses a certain fortitude of spirit that made this poem so popular and
2:11.8	led so many to latch onto it as a kind of personal anthem or rallying cry.
2:20.9	It has certainly captured the spirit of British stipp upper lipidness of the late 1800s, the reign of Queen Victoria.
2:38.2	But there's another side to the poem.
2:43.7	In the opening stands of the speaker,
	...

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