Say Anything Blog

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 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!

I thought of this poem I learned in rural North Dakota nearly 50 years ago when I heard our President give his speech on Iraq and victory today. When I read this poem and then look at what GWB said, and then listen to all the lefty politicos and MSM commentators who pontificate and criticize him and the war for civilization, it makes me sick.

But then, I feel so much better knowing GWB is in charge and ignoring the cacophony.

Then I think of what might have been if Gore, or worse...Kerry, had won and I don't feel so good again.

Read particularly the bold passages and see if it doesn't remind you of GWB.

Kipling must have been thinking of this day a hundred years ago when he wrote this poem.