*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 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!