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!

              – Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

• Written by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), an English (British) writer
• An inspirational poem where a father gives advice to his son:
  • Face adversities with coolness and goodness, and do not boast afterwards for doing so.
  • Treat both success and failure equally and wisely.
  • Never give up at any kind of loss or hindrance, even if you need to rebuild or start over again from the very beginning; hold on
  • Remain at right distance from others; not too close, not too distant
  • Make best use of the time available
• Reward: You will get everything on earth and even more; you will be a “Man”
  • “Man” = mature, not childish; big enough to know and handle the life situations well
• “keep your head” = stay calm
• “make allowance for” = excuse and take into consideration
• “pitch-and-toss” = gambling
• “hold on” = be persistent

Interpretation of the Poem

This poem is composed by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), an English poet. It is an inspirational poem where a father gives advice to his son on virtuous, triumphant and successful living. The father speaks in a long conditional sentence that begins with the word ‘if’, hence, the title of the poem itself is “If …”. This sentence contains several ifs, which get concluded with the main clause provided in the last two lines of the poem. The son will possess the Earth and everything in it, and will be a ‘Man,’ meaning a mature person, if certain several conditions are met by him. These conditions to be met are the various bits of advice that the son is to follow: Face adversities with coolness and goodness, and do not boast afterwards for doing so; treat both success and failure equally and wisely; never give up at any kind of loss or hindrance, even if you need to rebuild or start over again from the very beginning; keep holding on; remain at right distance from others – not too close, not too distant; and make best use of the time available. If all this advice is followed, then the son will no longer be a child, instead, he will be rewarded, as already mentioned above, with maturity and the inheritance of the Earth.

GLOSSARY

keep your head (id): stay calm
make allowance for (ph): excuse and take into consideration
triumph (n): great success
disaster (n): bad event, a complete failure
imposter (n): a person who pretends to be somebody else in order to trick people
knave (n): a dishonest man
stoop (v): to bend one’s body forward and down
pitch-and-toss (n): gambling
sinew (n): tissue (muscle)
hold on (id): be persistent