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 (1849-1903)
[James Stockdale, who used Stoicism to cope with captivity during the Vietnam War, says that this poem helped him get through the ordeals he faced.]
[…] tried to kill himself with shards of glass. A fellow prisoner scratched out lines of the poem Invictus where he knew Stockdale would see it. A poem known by Stoics everywhere. The last two lines were, […]
[…] tried to kill himself with shards of glass. A fellow prisoner scratched out lines of the poem Invictus where he knew Stockdale would see it. A poem known by Stoics everywhere. The last two lines were, […]
[…] tried to kill himself with shards of glass. A fellow prisoner scratched out lines of the poem Invictus where he knew Stockdale would see it. A poem known by Stoics everywhere. The last two lines were, […]
[…] tried to kill himself with shards of glass. A fellow prisoner scratched out lines of the poem Invictus where he knew Stockdale would see it. A poem known by Stoics everywhere. The last two lines were, […]
[…] tried to kill himself with shards of glass. A fellow prisoner scratched out lines of the poem Invictus where he knew Stockdale would see it. A poem known by Stoics everywhere. The last two lines were, […]
[…] tried to kill himself with shards of glass. A fellow prisoner scratched out lines of the poem Invictus where he knew Stockdale would see it. A poem known by Stoics everywhere. The last two lines were, […]