“IF” by Rudyard Kipling

I had the privilege of spending few weeks at Indian Naval Academy as a trainee recently but had to resign citing some medical issues. Nonetheless, i had a good learning experience there and the Rudyard Kipling poem i am writing below,which was framed and put in every dorm,is one of those. I hope you will have the same joy out of reading it as i did.

*****

If you can keep your head when all about you,

Are losing theirs and blaming 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 away 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 imposters just the same;

If you 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 winnings,

And risk it on one turn of pitch,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings,

And never breathe a word about your lose;

If you can force your heart and nerve,

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