A few whifs of stoicism aside, here’s a great poem I’ve just come across 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 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!
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This is brilliant. Way better than my most recent post. There’s a reason that Kipling is a renowned author and I play with dirt for a living.
I need to use the word knave more often. Well, even once yearly would be more than I use it now.
Hey Aron,
Liked this one…
I’m looking to read a little more poetry. Any good suggestions on where to start?
@Mike: Yes, it’s a good one, right?
Great question, but a hard one. I’m a big fan of Milton (Lycidas, Il Penseroso & L’Allegro, At a Solemn Musick, etc.). Then there’s Shakespeare, of course. Yeats, Keats, The Brownings (Robert, Elizabeth), Gray (Favourite Cat…, Elegy in a Churchyard, etc.), Donne (Death Be Not Proud, etc.), Hopkins (Carrion Comfort, etc.), Wordsworth, Thomas (Do Not Go Gentle, etc.), etc. There are a lot of good poets referenced in Elisabeth Elliot’s Passion and Purity and Sheldon Van Auken’s A Severe Mercy as well. T. David Gordon, in his recent book Why Johnny Can’t Preach, highly recommends Harold Bloom’s The Best Poems of the English Language : From Chaucer Through Robert Frost. If you buy something, be sure it’s well-annotated; that’s very helpful if you don’t have a teacher to question.
Another great resource for (especially devotional) poetry is the Trinity Hymnal and the Olney Hymns of John Newton and Charles Simeon. (I will often incorporate hymns into my private or family devotions for their theological as well as aesthetic beauty.) There’s so much out there – good and bad. Perhaps if Lauren (the lady-of-letters extraordinaire) stops by, she could give you some advice too…? Anyone else?