NELSON Mandela is said to have found inspiration in this stoical and defiant poem by the Victorian writer W E Henley (1849-1903).

Henley lost a foot to tubercular arthritis as a child and spent a year in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary to save the other. A close friend of R L Stevenson, he was also a publisher of contemporary writers ranging from Thomas Hardy to H G Wells.

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.