If
By Rudyard Kipling
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 deal in lies, or being hated – don’t give way to hating.
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken, twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or see the things you gave your life broken, and stoop and build ‘ em with worn-out tools;
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 make one heap of your winnings, and risk it on one turn of pitch and toss, and lose -– and start again at your beginnings, and never breath a word about your loss;
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, or walk with kings nor lose the common touch;
I 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 -– you’ll be a man, my son
