If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when others doubt you,
And 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 hatred,
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 these 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 for broken
And stoop and build them up again with worn-out tools.

-

If you can make one heap of all your winnings,
And risk it in one game 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, your nerve and sinew
To serve their turn, long after they are done;
And so hold on when there is nothing in you,
Except the will which says to them, ‘Hold on.’

-

If you cam talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
And walk with kings, nor lore 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 minute run –
Yours is the earth, and everything that’s in it;
And what is more – you’ll be a man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling
(1865 – 1936)