Miles Dignum: Poetry Project
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 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!
Analysis:
The poem “if by Rudyard Kipling can be interpreted in many ways and has many themes throughout. Firstly the poem describes all of the things that you should strive to do such as “If you can wait and not be tired by waiting” and at the end of the poem it says “And-which is more-you’ll be a man, my son!” so I think that the poem is describing the ways you need to live your life in order to truly become a man.
Another theme I see in the poem is to work hard and have a strong work ethic. He asks you to dream but not let your dreams control your entire life and that they must stay strong in defeat and stay humble in success and stay the same through success or failure when he says “Treat these two imposters the same”.
Next the poem says “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” I think this means that you have to be able to risk all that you have worked for and if you lose it all not cry over these things and start over as strong as ever having learned from your mistakes.
Finally the last line of the poem which ends in “my son!” makes me think that this could possibly be a father talking to his son about how to live your life and truly be a man. The father is teaching the son all the lessons that he learned throughout his life and what it means to truly be a man. So I think this is where the title ties into the poem, the father is saying “if” you can accomplish these things in your life you will be a man.