If, by Rudyard Kipling

 "If" is a famous poem written by Rudyard Kipling, first published in 1910 as part of his collection called "Rewards and Fairies." The poem offers a set of inspirational guidelines for living a noble and honorable life, emphasizing the virtues of patience, perseverance, self-confidence, and integrity.

The poem is written as a father's advice to his son, imparting wisdom on how to navigate the challenges and complexities of life. Kipling explores various scenarios and situations, presenting the reader with a series of hypothetical conditions and how to respond to them.

 

The central theme of the poem revolves around maintaining a balanced perspective in the face of adversity, staying determined in the pursuit of one's goals, and displaying moral fortitude. Kipling emphasizes the importance of maintaining composure, taking responsibility for one's actions, and learning from failures.

 

Throughout the poem, Kipling highlights the qualities that make a person truly virtuous, including the ability to trust oneself while remaining humble, to persevere through hardships without losing hope, to treat success and failure with equanimity, to control one's emotions, and to have the capacity to forgive.

 

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,
   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 impostors 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 up with wornout 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 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!