If you can keep your head when all about you <br />Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; <br />If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, <br />But make allowance for their doubting too; <br />If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, <br />Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies, <br />Or, being hated, don't give way to hating, <br />And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise; <br /> <br />If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; <br />If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; <br />If you can meet with triumph and disaster <br />And treat those two imposters just the same; <br />If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken <br />Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, <br />Or watch the things you gave your life to broken, <br />And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools; <br /> <br />If you can make one heap of all your winnings <br />And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, <br />And lose, and start again at your beginnings <br />And never breath a word about your loss; <br />If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew <br />To serve your turn long after they are gone, <br />And so hold on when there is nothing in you <br />Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on'; <br /> <br />If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, <br />Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch; <br />If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; <br />If all men count with you, but none too much; <br />If you can fill the unforgiving minute <br />With sixty seconds' worth of distance run - <br />Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, <br />And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!<br /><br />Edwin Baldwin<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/rudyard-kipling-s-if/
