Invictus - A small tribute to Mandela

Nelson Mandela's health condition doesn't seem to be improving and the world's once again paying more attention to this great man who "retired from retiring" and committed so much to achieving what he believed in despite his age.

I'm calling this a small tribute because there's not much that I know about Mandela. I have his Long Walk To Freedom but I haven't started reading it yet. Soon, I hope ( get behind me procrastinating-version-of-Steph!!). 

However, there was once that something close to Mandela's heart became something close to my heart too. A poem by William Ernest Henley, called Invictus. It inspired Mandela in his years in prison and it also became the title of a movie related to Mandela. I used it once for an elocution audition and it was then that I got an inkling of how this short yet powerful poem gave Mandela strength in those tough years. Beautiful. Appreciate it yourself -

Invictus

By : 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 not 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.