If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew If you can make one heap of all your winningsĪnd risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,Īnd lose, and start again at your beginningsĪnd never breathe a word about your loss Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,Īnd stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools: Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

If you can meet with Triumph and DisasterĪnd treat those two impostors just the same If you can think-and not make thoughts your aim If you can dream-and not make dreams your master Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,Īnd yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,īut make allowance for their doubting too If you can keep your head when all about you Let’s look at the poem, examine some of its points, and see what Kipling has to say about becoming a man. His well-known poem “If-” might best capture these lessons.

Stories like “The Man Who Would Be King” and dozens of his poems elevate the ideals of manliness of his time. Hence, in many of our schools Kipling is verboten.įor we men, particularly the young among us, could learn a few things from Kipling about manhood.

Though his novels “Kim” and “The Jungle Book” remain popular, and though he was the first writer in English to win the Nobel Prize in Literature and the youngest ever to receive that honor, critics generally label him an imperialist, which he was for most of his life, and a racist, which is debatable. Kipling (1865–1936) is little taught in our schools today. Of all our poets of the last 150 years, Kipling-OK, I’ll give a nod to Robert Service-was surely the strongest voice of the common man. He would have made the perfect bard for men such as these.Īs I write these words, I have at hand the 1921 edition of “Rudyard Kipling’s Verse: Inclusive Edition, 1885–1918.” As I thumb through these pages, I am struck by how many of his poems deal with men and what they do: soldiers, sailors, day laborers, and barkeeps, priests and kings, and regular guys. On a hot Virginia afternoon in early September, I stepped outside the Happy Creek Coffee Shop to take a break from writing and my computer.įrom where I stood, I could see a crew of workmen repairing a pothole on High Street, the driver of a Sysco truck delivering foodstuffs to a local restaurant, the bearded postman making his rounds, a policeman carrying coffee to his patrol car, and a young man on a moped delivering packages.

You will be a man my son