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 allowances 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 imposters
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 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 term 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 will be
Man, my son!
Stories: [On The Beach] [The Orphan]
Poems: [How I Wish] [The Colour of Life] [The Rose]
[Rudyard Kipling: If] [Jules Verne: The Complete Bibliography]
[Mr. Sherlock Holmes] [The Sherlock Holmes Quiz] [Prof. James Moriarty: Did He Really Exist!]