With everything going on in our world in 2020 I was reminded about it in an email from family...in going to see to it that my grandchildren learn it line by line ...when I was a kid this poem was in the waiting room of the Austell GA. Hospital (where I squeezed out into the world and I saw it for most of my young life (thank you Dr. Garrett ...you have no idea how much I took from this in my 67 years in this world)...

If...

Rudyard Kipling
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 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 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!

Excellent verse. I had to memorize it and then present it to the whole class when I was in sixth grade. It was a different world back then for sure.

We had to memorize it in grammar school too.

I memorised this Kipling poem in school back in India. In 1980 or so, I was in grade-school, and Rudyard Kipling was very popular among teachers in our school. This is way before Kipling's writings were considered to be racist or we had any "woke" or teachers who were SJWs.

My widow Mom would recited that to me often when I was growing up.

I like the poem but I never had to memorize it.

One of my favorites even though I came upon it later in life. Maybe it held more meaning at an older age for me. Hopefully it’s not lost on all our young. I hope in a generation virtual teachers aren’t using TicToc videos to teach.

excellent poem

should be required reading for all young men

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We learned that in school all those years a go and while not thinking of it for so long..it still is a wonderful piece of writing and great meaning.

I have this poem hanging up in my 2 year old’s bed room.

Thank you for posting that. My mother gave me a few lines of that when I was a kid, but I never knew where they came from.

I have it matted, mounted and framed in my main foyer.

"If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same" is inscribed over the players' entrance to Centre Court at Wimbledon. Very apropos.

The first two lines---
"If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you" are what I always told new police academy cadets they'd need to remember the most on the streets.