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26taurus
Knowflake

Posts: 13799
From: *
Registered: Jun 2004

posted May 08, 2008 12:44 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for 26taurus     Edit/Delete Message

[IF]

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 all on 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 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!


--Rudyard Kipling

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26taurus
Knowflake

Posts: 13799
From: *
Registered: Jun 2004

posted May 08, 2008 11:36 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for 26taurus     Edit/Delete Message
I remember the first time I heard this one many moons ago. A friend of mine recited it; he knows it by heart. His father had him memorize it when he was young.

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juniperb
Knowflake

Posts: 6915
From: Blue Star Kachina
Registered: Mar 2002

posted May 08, 2008 06:11 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for juniperb     Edit/Delete Message
26T, thanks! I`ve always loved that one.

Ha, when I was a youngun, about the only poem I could recite complete was The Cremation of Sam McGee... As odd and perhaps as morbid as is , it fascinated me and gave me guidelines of what a "true" friend would do for me

I ,like old Sam ,love huskies and hate the artic cold.

juni

------------------
~
What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world is immortal"~

- George Eliot

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26taurus
Knowflake

Posts: 13799
From: *
Registered: Jun 2004

posted May 08, 2008 11:41 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for 26taurus     Edit/Delete Message
Wow, juni! And that's a long one to remember too!

I just looked it up and read it. Very moving.
Thank you.

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