In the fell clutch of circumstance / I have not winced nor cried aloud. / Under the bludgeonings of chance / My head is bloody, but unbowed.

This is the second stanza of “Invictus”, written in 1875 while Henley was in hospital for tubercular infection of the bone, which cost him a leg. The poem was printed in 1888. The better-known last two lines about being master of his fate are a separate quotation in this glossary.