If

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,

• 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!