| 'If'
By Rudyard Kipling
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 all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and
start again at your beginnings
And never breath 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! |
