If by Rudyard Kipling

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,

   And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
   Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,


If you can meet with triumph and disaster
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
   If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

   Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
   And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings
   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 never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
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”;


   Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
   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—

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling, 1865 - 1936