INVICTUS

WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY

– was an influencial
British poet, critic, and editor who
in his journals introduced the early
work of many of the great English
writers of the 1890s.
–He is known for his best
known poem, “the Invictus”.
Invictus – is a four-stanza rhyming
poem in iambic tetrameter, that is, with
four beats or stresses in each line.
Occasional trochees (and spondees)
occur to sharpen up this steady
rhythm.
–Have a rhyme scheme is abab cdcd
efef ghgh.
– Invictus, means “unconquerable”or
“undefeated” in Latin.
 “INVICTUS”
BY WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY – In the first stanza of Invictus,
the speaker talks about the
Out of the night that covers night that covers him like a
me, physical thing. This night
Black as the pit from pole seems to have covered the
to pole, entire world. The speaker
I thank whatever gods may be thanks god(s) who have given
For my unconquerable him this braveness and calls his
soul. soul unconquerable.
 –The speaker talks about the
In the fell clutch of
hardships he has faced in the
circumstance second stanza. He compares the
I have not winced hardships to being clutched by the
nor cried aloud. fist of circumstance. He says even
Under the bludgeonings through all that he has never
of chance complained or cried. He says that
My head is bloody, chance beats his head up and
but unbowed. makes it bloody, yet he has never
accepted defeat.
Beyond this place of In the third stanza, the poet
wrath and tears says that horror has always
Looms but the Horror lurked behind him. But it
of the shade, always finds him unafraid.
And yet the menace of the Whenever menace or trouble
years has come in his life he has
faced it bravely.
Finds and shall find
me unafraid.
It matters not how –Finally, in the last stanza,
strait the gate, Henley says that though the
How charged with gate of life is narrow he will
punishments the definitely pass it with vigor.
Moreover, he declares that
scroll,
he is the master of his fate,
I am the master of my meaning his fortune. Also,
fate: he claims that he is the
I am the captain of my captain of his soul.
soul.
Nelson Mandela
– the anti-apartheid leader
who was jailed 27 years for his
activism and in 1994 became
President of South Africa,
regularly recited the poem
Invictus during his
imprisonment.