(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)
The poem from which the film Invictus (about which I wrote in my immediately previous blog entry) takes its title — and which evidently inspired Nelson Mandela during his many years in South African prisons — was written by William Ernest Henley (1849-1903). Curiously, at least according to his Wikipedia entry, Henley — who lost one of his legs to disease as a boy — inspired Robert Louis Stevenson to create the character of Long John Silver (in Treasure Island, 1883), while Henley’s little daughter Margaret inspired J.M. Barrie’s choice of the name Wendy for the heroine of his play Peter Pan (1904). (It had been a relatively rare feminine name prior to that time.) A sickly child who could not speak clearly, Margaret referred to her friend Barrie as her “fwendy-wendy,” from which Barrie derived the name. Unfortunately, neither William Ernest Henley nor his daughter Margaret lived long enough to see Peter Pan published or produced. Margaret died in early 1894, at the age of five.
But here is the text of Henley’s famous poem:
“Invictus”
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.
I like the poem. I like its spirit, its strength, its affirmation of self-reliance, its resistance and refusal to surrender. I can easily see why Nelson Mandela loved it.
However, there is another perspective, expressed by Orson F. Whitney, who served as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1906 until his death in 1931:
“The Soul’s Captain”
Art thou in truth the master of thy fate?
The captain of thy soul?
Then what of him
who bought thee with his blood?
Who plunged into devouring seas
and snatched thee from the raging flood?
Who bore for all our fallen race
what none but him could bear–
the God who died that man might live,
and endless glory share?
Of what avail thy vaunted strength,
Apart from his vast might?
Pray that his Light
may pierce the gloom,
that thou might see aright.
Men are as bubbles on the wave,
as leaves upon the tree,
O’ captain of thy soul, explain!
Who gave that place to thee?
Free will is thine–free agency,
To wield for right or wrong;
But thou must answer unto him
To whom all souls belong.
Bend to the dust thy head “unbowed,”
small part of Life’s great whole!
And see in him, and him alone,
The Captain of thy soul.
Posted from Herzliya, Israel
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