05/21/2026
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, donβt deal in lies,
Or, being hated, donβt give way to hating,
And yet donβt look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dreamβand not make dreams your master;
If you can thinkβand 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 youβve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build βem 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: βHold onβ;
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kingsβnor 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 secondsβ worth of distance runβ
Yours is the Earth and everything thatβs in it,
Andβwhich is moreβyouβll be a Man, my son!
If, Rudyard Kipling (1865 β1936), via The Academy of American Poets
Diploma with NurreCaxton frame and Bainbridge mat from , fillet by , anti-reflective glass by Tru Vue
