Love Kipling

IF

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 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 the Triumph and Disaster

And treat these two impostors just the same,

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stop and build 'em up with worn-out-tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it all on turns of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinue

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 the sixty second's 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!