If
Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Ā Ā Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
Ā Ā But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Ā Ā Or, being lied about, donāt deal in lies,
Or, being hated, donāt give way to hating,
Ā Ā And yet donāt look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dreamāand not make dreams your master;
Ā Ā If you can thinkāand not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
Ā Ā And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth youāve spoken
Ā Ā Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
Ā Ā And stoop and build āem up with wornout tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
Ā Ā And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
Ā Ā And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
Ā Ā To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Ā Ā Except the Will which says to them: āHold onā;
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Ā Ā Or walk with kingsānor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
Ā Ā If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty secondsā worth of distance runā
Ā Ā Yours is the Earth and everything thatās in it,
Andāwhich is moreāyouāll be a Man, my son!