UNFORGOTTEN POETRY

There was a discussion on a Certain Social Medium the other day about the values involved in educating boys. Some would argue that the following applies equally to girls, and well it may. But for those who flounder in the bringing up of young savages and sometimes wonder if there is anything between video games with exploding cars and skulls on the one hand and Milquetoast on the other, I once again put up this admirable poem. We all think we know it, been there, done that, but it is worth reading over again. It's as fresh as it was in 1909, when Kipling wrote it for his son John. A few years later John was dead, in the trenches. (And his father wrote the deeply moving short story "The Gardener", not to be missed.)

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 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 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 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!