Today is the birthday of William Ernest Henley. Were he still alive, he would now be turning one hundred and seventy five years old.
Henley wrote my dad’s favorite poem, which our father would often quote to us when we were kids. Here it is, in its entirety.
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.
— William Ernest Henley