"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 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 imposters 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 breath 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 1910

Rudyard Kipling's "If" is perhaps his most famous poem. Kipling composed the poem in 1909 while living in Great Britain. It was first published in 1910 in Kipling's collection of children's stories, Rewards and Fairies, as a companion piece to the story "Brother Square Toes," which is an account of George Washington and his presidency during the French Revolution. The placement of the didactic poem after "Brother Square Toes" in the collection serves to distill a specific lesson from the story for its young readers.

"If" attracted immediate nationwide attention in Britain, and it was quickly adopted as a popular anthem. In the Kipling Journal, C. E. Carrington relates Kipling's own words of subtle displeasure regarding the unexpected rampant popularity of the poem:

Among the verses in Rewards . . . was one set called "If," which escaped from the book, and for a while ran about the world . . . Once started, the mechanization of the age made them snowball themselves in a way that startled me . . . Twenty-seven of the Nations of the Earth translated them into their seven-and-twenty tongues, and printed them on every sort of fabric.

"If" is a didactic poem, a work meant to give instruction. In this case, "If" serves as an instruction in several specific traits of a good leader. Kipling offers this instruction not through listing specific characteristics, but by providing concrete illustrations of the complex actions a man should or should not take which would reflect these characteristics.

In modern times, "If" remains widely anthologized and is regarded as a popular classic of English literature, not necessarily for a display of artistry but for its familiarity and inspiration.