There is a paradox at the heart of “Invictus”—the poet is without hope, helpless and discouraged. And yet the poet also feels empowered and encouraged. This resilience, the poem suggests, is a particularly human virtue that resists logic. After all, the conditions that provoke it, uncertainty and vulnerability, should not in turn produce strength and courage. And yet as Henley records in the opening stanza, only the feeling of utter hopelessness can generate the sustaining energy of resilience. Resilience is thus created by the very conditions it conquers.

The poem begins in misery, offering no moments from the threat of despair. Neither does the poem offer narrative context. Unspecified conditions have gutted the speaker’s heart. He is alone, and his soul—the Christian God—has become a vague presence of “gods” (Line 3). The speaker is left only with the feeling of imminent surrender. In using the metaphor of the night, the poem suggests how immersed the speaker feels within these circumstances. In a world still five years away from the invention of the light bulb, night represents a pressing and sinister darkness, the night-world absent illumination.