Character Education
Informational
Handbook & Guide
Poetry
If
by 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 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 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!
Would men or women who practiced
these above mentioned traits be considered to possess good character?
Do you agree with all that Kipling is advocating? Would we desire for
our children that they tell the truth, and trust themselves if acting
in an honorable manner, to be willing to lose and to start again, and
to keep their virtue?
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