[Clive Watkins]

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 walk 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)

[gp]

Thanks for posting this Clive.

It certainly does not deserve the disrespect it has received.

~Greg

[Michael Cantor]

Nor does it deserve the respect it has received in in other quarters. Personally, I prefer Gunga Din or Danny Deever. If you're going to be pompous - go all the way!

(I wasn't crazy about Nigel's parody either - although for totally different reasons.)

[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited May 10, 2002).]

[Wild Bill]

I'm not a certain that the poem is pompous. I would agree that it has been put to pompous <u>uses</u> by others since it was written. But considering the state of the art in Kipling's day, I don't think it's terribly overblown.

------------------
Bill

[gp]

Michael

I'm not sure: should we judge a poem by its adherents?

I think the poem is akin to the Tao of an Englishman myself.

Not a word in it is false. And S-3 I think is an absolute triumphant take on the human spirit.

Sure, maybe the last 2 lines are a bit melodramatic. I'll give you that.

~Greg



[This message has been edited by gp (edited May 10, 2002).]

[nyctom]

This poem is just so painfully sincere it makes me wince. One wishes some of these Victorians were less self-important and more self-deprecating. A sense of humor would have gone a long way to alleviate such pompousity. But then again I am a huge fan of the Wilde plays and the Cope poems--so that probably reflects my own bias.

I don't think anyone could deny it is a temptng poem to parody.

One wonders, based on this poem, what Kipling would have said if the poem were written to his daughter.

[This message has been edited by nyctom (edited May 10, 2002).]

[RCL]

I'm most impressed by the thirty-line periodic sentence. A very sincere period.



------------------
Ralph

[gp]

It's important to read the title of this poem.

[Terese Coe]

Thanks for the reminder, Clive. I don't find it pompous, though I agree with Greg that the last two lines are way over the top (actually, not so different from "And the meek shall inherit the earth"—is that how it goes?).

The problem is holding mankind to such a high bar: we've fallen a long way from even wanting to contemplate "virtue" of this altruistic type. The 40s English film where Charles Laughton recites this so bathetically (forgot the name, the one with Vivien Leigh) probably contributed to the undermining of the poem. It's actually not so much Victorian as Asian wisdom imo. For example:

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools

This was hardly a common attribute of Western men and women even in Victoria's time.

And this, typical of third-world people and the poor more than the rest of us:

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools

I'm about to email this to a few young people for opinions. Thanks Clive.

Terese

[A. E. Stallings]

The concept of didactic verse is so far removed from contemporary poetic sensibility that I think to try to critique it by such is a futile and perverse exercise. "If's" popularity and longevity remind us that it doesn't need our personal imprimitur. In fact, I just walked by a poster the other day with this poem translated into Modern Greek!

Is this sentimental? I'm not so sure. We may feel it so because we distrust the sentiment in the first place, without considering the methods by which he appeals to the sentiment. The ease with which the multisyllabic rimes fall into place may make this feel "glib" to contemporary ears. The title is important here--this poem doesn't say, do this, do that, rather, if you can do this, if you can do that--and if so, you won't be a hero or a god or a prince--but a man. It is an ideal of human behavior I don't think anyone can fully achieve--an Ars Vivendi rather than an Ars Poetica. But that doesn't mean one shouldn't strive. The modern era is too steeped in irony, perhaps, and anti-heroism, so perhaps it is the goal itself that rings false to many ears nowadays.

We also belong to an era in poetry where the startling "image" is the benchmark of a poem. The reason for this is, of course, that free verse has a more limited palette of poetic effects, having tossed out rime and meter. Image and metaphor are not the end-all be-all of poetry. The phrases and syntax here have their own balance and elegance, something our sensibilities may be dulled to. Though who can be completely insensate to "fill the unforgiving minute/ with sixty seconds worth of distance run"?

Still, whatever our judgment, these verses will give pleasure and inspiration long after our Age of Irony is as old fashioned as the Victorians seem to us.

Actually, Kipling is undergoing something of a revival as we speak. I believe an important biography just came out about him, that revises many of the long-held views of him, as racist colonialist, etc.