| |
| 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, | 5 |
| 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, | 10 |
| 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, | 15 |
| 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; | 20 |
| 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, | 25 |
| 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, | 30 |
| Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, | |
| And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son! | |
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