Categories: POETRY

IF – Poetry by Rudyard Kipling

IF

if.1.1if.1.1If 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!

(Rudyard Kipling)

http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Rudyard-Kipling-Wordsworth-Library/dp/1853264059

FacebookFacebookPinterestPinterestInstagramInstagram
AddThis Website Tools
Meeting Bench

Share
Published by
Meeting Bench

Recent Posts

WALKING IN BEAUTYWALKING IN BEAUTY

WALKING IN BEAUTY

A Journey Where Wisdom Comes from Listening, Not Speaking The Indigenous Peoples of North America…

3 days ago
ROMEO, JULIET AND A BALCONYROMEO, JULIET AND A BALCONY

ROMEO, JULIET AND A BALCONY

Passion and Tragedy in Shakespeare's Verona The desire to escape from the everyday and take…

1 week ago
TOWARDS THE INNER LIGHTTOWARDS THE INNER LIGHT

TOWARDS THE INNER LIGHT

Provence Trip, Inspiration for All Beauty Lovers "Sometimes you leave to forget, other times to…

2 weeks ago

HYBRIDS, PURE LINES AND HUMAN CREATIVE VIGOUR

When originality feeds on contamination Taking on different meanings depending on the context in which…

3 weeks ago

I BROUGHT YOU A ZLOTY

The Ermine, a Powerful Symbol Capable of Evoking Deep Meanings in Art and Collective Psychology…

1 month ago

THE WONDER IN THE EYES

An invitation to rediscover the beauty of the world and the joy of living If…

1 month ago