🌾 Today’s Poem ~ If

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, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
Ā  Ā And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
Ā  Ā If you can think—and 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 you’ve 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 ’em 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: ā€œHold onā€;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Ā  Ā Or walk with kings—nor 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 seconds’ worth of distance run—
Ā  Ā Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

 

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