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IF-what a man should be

I am a big fan of short poems. I think poetry is a beautiful tool of art, a powerful tool for expression. Often times, the deepest or most complex or emotional stories are told in the shortest and most beautiful form via poems. 

Rudyard Kipling happens to be one outstanding writer of short-stories and a poet in the nineteenth centuries, the first English writer to be awarded the Nobel prize in Literature. My favorite of his poems is “IF” a short powerful poem which more or less sums up what a man should be. It is interesting to see how very relevant this poem continues to be even in our current time.
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 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 non too much;
if you can fill the unforgiving minute
   with sixty seconds of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
   And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

Source: Page 137 of 100 Poems old and New Rudyard Kipling by Thomas Pinney

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