KIPLING’S POEM TO HIS SON

KIPLING’S POEM TO HIS SON

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was born in India but educated in England. He started his career as a journalist but with the passage of time became a great poet, short story writer and novelist. He was A to Z supporter of British imperialism in India.  However, his writings were based on the first-hand experience of the life of the innumerable people both around him and inside the officialdom.    

             The poem that follows is one of his best compositions.  It is titled “IF’ and is addressed to his son.  As the readers will note, the poem is a sort of complete  mantra for a young man’s all-round development and the resultant happiness. success and prosperity in this world.

“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 --- not make dreams your ma ser;

If you can thing ---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 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 losing friends can hurt;

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! “

            Though addressed to his own young son, Kipling has unconsciously succeeded in making it an everlasting inspiring poem for all sorts of people anywhere in the world.  

26^th January 2020                                          G. R. KANWAL