If—
Thirty-two lines of quiet advice from a father to a son, read over a three-minute flight across hills, gorges, moors, storms, mountains and out to open sea at sunrise.
The words
If you can keep your head when all about youAre 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 DisasterAnd treat those two impostors just the same;If you can bear to hear the truth you've spokenTwisted 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 winningsAnd risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,And lose, and start again at your beginningsAnd never breathe a word about your loss;If you can force your heart and nerve and sinewTo serve your turn long after they are gone,And so hold on when there is nothing in youExcept 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 minuteWith 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!
What to listen for
The whole poem is one sentence. Thirty lines of if, and the main clause does not arrive until the very last two: yours is the Earth. Read it aloud and you feel the ground being withheld from you until the end — which is exactly what the poem is about, holding on before you know the outcome.
Kipling wrote it as advice to his son John, and the virtues he lists are all forms of steadiness rather than victory: waiting, not hating back, treating triumph and disaster as the same pair of liars, rebuilding with worn-out tools.
The one line children remember best is usually the unforgiving minute — sixty seconds' worth of distance run. It is a poem about doing the next right thing with the time you actually have.
Public domain. Reading and film made for Planet Neverland.