Poetry Wednesday 10/07/09: Invictus

Grandfather Mountain, North Carolina
by Helen Hopper

Invictus
By W.E. Henley, 1875

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 unbow’d.

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.

W.E. Henley, 1875

I’ll be your hostess again this week. My sister, Sans Souci, has been very busy helping our mom get adjusted to her new assisted living residence, but she will check in.

Before we get started, please make sure that your post has a link to get back to this page to make it easier to take the tour:

1) Copy and paste the following link that I have provided for you from this page to somewhere on your poetry post.
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Link back to the Poetry Wednesday tour on Laurita’s page

2) Leave the link of your poetry post in the comments section below. This is the link guests will click on to read your poem.

Left: W.E. Henley By William Nicholson (1872-1949)

About the artist:
William Nicholson was a painter, print-maker and theatre designer. His father was a member of Parliament and he was sent to study art at the Academie Julian in Paris. He started his professional career as a designer of posters and as a book illustrator but soon became an innovative and celebrated maker of woodcuts. He broke ground with his experimental techniques and his original woodcut portrait of Queen Victoria was one of the most famous British prints ever made. The striking contrasts of black and white of his woodcutting technique were used to great effect on posters, on which he collaborated with his brother-in-law James Pryde. They became known as the Beggerstaff Brothers.

W.E. Henley (born Aug. 23, 1849, Gloucester, Gloucestershire, Eng. — died July 11, 1903, Woking, near London) British poet, critic, and editor.

He and was the eldest of a family of six children, five sons and a daughter. His father, William, was a bookseller and stationer who died in 1868 and was survived by his young children and creditors. His mother, Mary Morgan, was descended from the poet and critic, Joseph Warton. From 1861-67 Henley was a pupil at the Crypt Grammar School (founded 1539). A Commission had attempted recently to revive the school by securing the brilliant and academically distinguished T. E. Brown (1830-1897) as headmaster. Brown’s appointment was relatively brief (c.1857-63) but was a ‘revelation’ for Henley because it introduced him to a poet and ‘man of genius – the first I’d ever seen’. This was the start of a lifelong friendship and Henley wrote an admiring memorial to Brown in the New Review (December, 1897): “He was singularly kind to me at a moment when I needed kindness even more than I needed encouragement”.

From the age of 12 Henley suffered from tuberculosis of the bone which resulted in the amputation of his left leg below the knee during either 1865 or 1868-69. Frequent illness often kept him from school, although the fortunes of his father’s business may also have contributed. During 1867, Henley passed the Oxford Local Schools Examination and soon afterwards moved to London where he attempted to establish himself as a journalist. However, his work over the next eight years was interrupted by long periods in hospital because his right foot was also diseased. Henley contested the diagnosis that a second amputation was the only way to save his life by becoming a patient of the pioneering surgeon Joseph Lister (1827-1912) at the The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. After three years in hospital (1873-75), Henley was discharged. Lister’s treatment had not effected a complete cure but enabled Henley to have a relatively active life for nearly 30 years. His friend, Robert Louis Stevenson, based his Treasure Island character, Long John Silver, on Henley.

His literary acquaintances also resulted in his sickly young daughter, Margaret Emma Henley (b. 4 September 1888), being immortalised by J. M. Barrie in his children’s classic Peter Pan. Unable to speak clearly, the young Margaret referred to her friend Barrie as her “fwendy-wendy (sic)”, resulting in the use of the name Wendy. Margaret never read the book; she died on 11 February 1894 at the age of 5 and was buried at the country estate of her father’s friend, Harry Cockayne Cust, in Cockayne Hatley, Bedfordshire.

After his recovery, Henley earned a living in publishing. During 1889 he became editor of the Scots Observer, an Edinburgh journal similar to the old Saturday Review. It was transferred to London during 1891 as the National Observer and remained under Henley’s editorship until 1893. Though, as Henley confessed, the paper had almost as many writers as readers, and its fame was confined mainly to the literary class, it was a lively and influential feature of the literary life of its time. Henley had an editor’s gift of discerning talent, and the “Men of the Scots Observer,” as Henley affectionately and characteristically termed his band of contributors, in most instances justified his insight. The newspaper’s context was often sympathetic to the growing imperialism of its time, and among other services to literature it published Rudyard Kipling‘s Barrack-Room Ballads.

Henley died at the age of 53 and was buried in the same churchyard as his daughter in Cockayne Hatley. His wife, Salina Robinson Henley, was later buried at the same site.

Arguably his best-remembered work is the poem “Invictus“, written in 1875. It is said that this was written as a demonstration of his resilience following the amputation of his foot due to tubercular infection. This passionate and defiant poem should be compared with his beautiful and contemplative acceptance of death and dying in the poem “Margaritae Sorori”.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._E._Henley
Source: http://dl.lib.brown.edu:8081/exist/mjp/plookup.xq?id=NicholsonWilliam
Source: http://www.schoonerserenity.com/Serenity%20sunset%20smaller%20file.JPG

Green Wheat Field with Cypress, 1889
By Vincent Van Gogh
Oil on canvas

The Ways are Green
By W.E. Henley, 1878

The ways are green with the gladdening sheen Of the young year’s fairest daughter. O, the shadows that fleet o’er the springing wheat! O, the magic of running water! The spirit of spring is in every thing, The banners of spring are streaming, We march to a tune from the fifes of June, And life’s a dream worth dreaming.

It’s all very well to sit and spell
At the lesson there’s no gainsaying;
But what the deuce are wont and use
When the whole mad world’s a-maying?
When the meadow glows, and the orchard snows,
And the air’s with love-motes teeming,
When fancies break, and the senses wake,
O, life’s a dream worth dreaming!
What Nature has writ with her lusty wit
Is worded so wisely and kindly
That whoever has dipped in her manuscript
Must up and follow her blindly.
Now the summer prime is her blithest rhyme
In the being and the seeming,
And they that have heard the overword
Know life’s a dream worth dreaming.

“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.”
~ W.E. Henley

The tour starts here.

The Ways are Green By W.E. Henley, 1878

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The Ways are Green
By W.E. Henley, 1878