| 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 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! |
