Nelson Mandela
Last week the world
lost a great leader and I decided to post the poem he used to read while he was
in jail.
Invictus
William Ernest Henley
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 bludgeoning 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,
Hoe charged with punishments
the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
In the movie “Invictus”,
Mandela gives the captain of the national South African rugby team the poem to
inspire him to lead his team to a Rugby World Cup win, telling him how it
inspired Mandela in prison.
Actually, as opposed to the
movie, Mandela gave the captain a copy of the “The Man in the Arena” passage
from President of United States Theodore Roosevelt’s speech Citizenship in a
Republic instead.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who hold points out how
the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them
better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face
is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who
comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and
shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great
enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at
the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the
worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place
shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor
defeat.”
