Daily quote by William Ernest Henley

• 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.
  • "Life and Death" (Echoes), IV (1875)
  • Titled "Invictus" in Q's Oxford Book of English Verse (1900) no. 842, p. 1019. Read by Alan Bates, UBS TV-Commercial Series "Poems 1997", CNN [1] · Read by Morgan Freeman in Invictus (2009 film) [2]
  • Compare: James B. Kenyon, "A Challenge", An Oaten Pipe (1895) p. 69:

    Arise, O Soul, and gird thee up anew,
      Though the black camel Death kneel at thy gate;
    No beggar thou that thou for alms shouldst sue;
      Be the proud captain still of thine own fate!