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, dont 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 - an 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 one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they have gone,
And so hold on when there in nothing in you
Except the Will which say 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 on you, but none to 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!
THE BRIDGE BUILDER - W.A. DROMGOOLE
An old man going a lone highway
Came at the evening, cold and gray,
To a chasm vast and wide and steep,
With waters rolling cold and deep.
The old man crossed in the twilight dim,
The sullen stream had no fears for him;
But he turned when safe on the other side,
And built a bridge to span the tide.
"Old man," said a fellow pilgrim near,
You are wasting your strength with building here.
Your journey will end with the ending day,
You never again will pass this way.
You've crossed the chasm, deep and wide,
Why build you this bridge at eventide?'
The builder lifted his old grey head.
"Good friend, in the path I have come, "he said,
"There followeth after me today
A youth whose feet must pass this way.
The chasm that was as naught to me
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be;
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim-
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him."
">