On a claim made from a sickbed

Henley wrote this after losing a leg to tuberculosis, while fighting to keep the other. That is the fact the poster versions leave out, and it changes what the couplet is doing.

Read as a statement about circumstances, it is plainly false, and he knew it better than his readers. Read as a claim about the one province still his — what he made of it, said about it, refused to become because of it — it holds, and only just.