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If
Rudyard Kipling
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!
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You hear them shout at you
A ditty by Mey Kraus
You hear them shout at you, their outcry vicious;
Guide dreadful thoughts into your poor young mind
About unlikely routes and gloomy issues -
Your failure, and the failure of your kind:
No man can stay on Verity's faint margin,
And know without a need for guiding books
Just when to be one valiant knight and charge in,
And when to be one cunning, furtive rook;
None can employ skill to reach their true mission -
Instead, they flaunt tricks for their livelihood,
And as for putting faith in intuition,
It seems that no one ever could or would;
No one will break an ominous group-duty
By having one key round of 'yea or nay';
And nobody can manifest true beauty,
But do without that option anyway;
No one can pay the dead with shock and sorrow
But end up as a crutch and not a load;
And none will lay out programs for tomorrow -
Instead, they'll be afraid of what dawn bodes;
No man will own a dry wit or discretion,
Yet choose to cloak them with a goofy guile;
No bloke can wear a furious expression
But fix that fury with one tiny smile;
No man will solve the feud of warring factions
Yet be uninterested in taking lead;
No man can back bright words with thoughtful actions -
And if no man, then surely not a kid.
You hear them croak their doleful points each season,
Their wretched voices growing ever strong.
They say a lot of things, those men of reason.
Stand up, my boy. It's time to prove them wrong.
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