Beautiful Losers

 

The poem “Invictus” is widely popular in Britain. Prince Harry took the title for his “Invictus Games.”

I find it Satanic. It expresses the attitude of the unrepentant narcissist. It is like the words that Milton puts in the mouth of Satan in Paradise Lost: “I would rather rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.”

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.

This is someone choosing to go to Hell.

I get a whiff of the same brimstone from Rudyard Kipling. I defend him from the usual charges, of being intellectually trite and of being racist. I don’t believe he is. But I cannot warm to “If,” reputedly the single most popular poem in the UK. This does not, to me, speak well of the British character:

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

… If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

This is too proud. This is the triumph of the will.

Rather, we are to be as little children. Rather, true courage is to surrender our will to God. Rather, there is a crack in everything.

For that is how the light gets in.