INVICTUS

Though it will be highly unlikely that I am going to face circumstances as severe and important as Nelson Mandela, I was profoundly affected by the film Invictus, and in particular the scene, where Francois Peinaar, the Springboks captain visits Mandela's cell, and imagines Mandela in prison; breaking up rocks, sleeping on a blanket; powerful stuff.

Here is William Ernest Henley's short poem published in 1888, 102 years before Mandela's release in 1990.

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.