RUDYARD KIPLING

Rudyard Kipling is a name that is well-known to anyone growing up in the U.K. but, perhaps, not so well-known to anyone growing up in the U.S.  His is also a name from the U.K.’s colonial past, so knowledge of his poems and stories are probably fading even in the U.K. However, the film made of his book “The Man Who Would Be King”, starring Michael Caine and Sean Connery, is well-known, even if its author is not.

      Kipling was born in British India in the mid-nineteenth century and died in London in 1936. His collection of books and poems include “The Jungle Book”, “Kim”, “Just So Stories, “Gunga Din”, “The White Man’s Burden”, and many others, but the one that has always resonated with me is called, simply, “IF”. I have read it many times over the years, after first hearing it at school. I came across it again recently and thought I would share it in a blog because it rings as true today as it did when he wrote it over a hundred years ago.

      To my delight, when I was checking to make sure I had the wording exactly right, I came across a video of Sir Michael Caine reading the poem. The link is through Youtube and I encourage you to listen and watch it, including Sir Michael Caine’s short commentary afterwards. (Type in www.youtube.com on your browser. Then “If by Rudyard Kipling recited by Sir Michael Caine”. Make sure you look at the one that is that exact wording – the others have ads).

The wording of the poem is as follows:

“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!

      As I was writing this blog, it occurred to me that this poem is not only as relevant today as it was when it was written, it now has a relevance beyond what Kipling intended when he wrote it. It applies to the other half of the world’s population as well – it applies to daughters as well as sons. All you have to do is change the last line.