Source: W. E. Henley, A Book of Verses, second edition (London: David Nutt, 1889; copy issued in New York by Scribner & Welford), “Life and Death (Echoes)” IV, pp. 56–57 (Internet Archive page images, leaves n79–n80); compared with Project Gutenberg #1568 (Henley, Poems, 1907)
Source URL: https://archive.org/details/abookverses00henlgoog; https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1568
Public domain basis: Written 1875; first published in A Book of Verses (1888); the author died in 1903; public domain worldwide.
Coverage: Complete: the four stanzas as printed in the second edition of A Book of Verses, where the poem is untitled, numbered IV, headed “To R. T. H. B.” and dated 1875. The title Invictus was supplied by Arthur Quiller-Couch in The Oxford Book of English Verse (1900).


# 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.