If you can keep your head when all about you
____Are losing theirs and blaming it on your;
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 say 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 second’s 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!

____________________________________Joseph Rudyard Kipling
____________________________________________1865-1936