Movember's Muse - 'If' by Rudyard Kipling,
video from YouTube here
If—BY RUDYARD KIPLING
from The Poetry Foundation
If—BY RUDYARD KIPLING
(‘Brother Square-Toes’—Rewards and Fairies)
If you can keep your head when all about
you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on
you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting
too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too
wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your
master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts
your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the
same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for
fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out
tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of
pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
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 talk with crowds and keep your
virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common
touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too
much;
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!
Source: A Choice of Kipling's Verse (1943)
