Invictus

As a salute to the late President Reagan, Turner Classic Movies has been playing a selection of his old movies. I’ve just finished watching one of his best: Kings Row. As the movie ends a chorus soars singing Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s processional theme we’ve heard throughout the movie. I never noticed it before but the words they’re singing are from the same poem quoted by Robert Cummings in the climactic scene of the movie.

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 E. HENLEY

Henley was a remarkable character. Contracted tuberculosis at age 12; left leg amputated at age 16. Ill very nearly all his life. His only child died of meningitis. A friend of Robert Louis Stevenson’s, Henley was one of the most influential English poets and editors of the late 19th century. The final stanza of the poem encapsulates Henley’s personal philosophy. Now that’s courage.

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