INVICTUS

If you learn English as a foreign language, you will find many difficulties at early stages of your learning. Do not get your head down. It is said there are easy and effective ways to improve your English through films, songs, or poems. Why poems? It helps you to develop your vocabulary, an essential aspect to make your English sounds and looks more beautiful.

 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.

As there is always a story behind every picture, that poem has one too. The story behind the making of that short poem fascinates me:

Henley actually wrote this poem after he went through a very painful and difficult situation. When he was young, Henley was diagnosed with tuberculosis of the bone, which is an infection that can affect almost any part of the body (George Shiffman). In Henley's case, this disease caused him to undergo an amputation of his leg below the knee. This amputation was said to be very painful, because aesthetics were not used in the procedure. When Henley was told that another operation would have to be done on his other leg, he decided to enlist in the help of another doctor named Joseph Lister. After being under Lister's care, Henley was able to keep his other leg and put his disease to rest for 30 years. ("William Ernest Henley 1849-1903"). This experience ,along with an impoverished childhood, motivated Henley to write invictus and played a major role in the theme and tone of the poem. Signs of Henley being in pain from his disease, but not giving up, are evident throughout this composition. (source: https://sites.google.com/site/jreedeshs/home/invictus-analysis)

I myself like the last part the most, “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.”

(oh, this is my very first post labelled to English :D)