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!

Background and Analysis of This Poem

Rudyard Kipling's If, often printed as If—, was first published in 1910 in his collection Rewards and Fairies. The poem is commonly linked to Leander Starr Jameson, whose failed 1895 raid against the South African Republic became a celebrated imperial episode in Britain, although one now viewed through a much more critical historical lens. The Kipling Society discusses the Jameson connection in its reader's guide, while Britannica gives broader context for Kipling's literary fame, imperial outlook and later reputation. That context matters because If is not simply a private fatherly sermon. It belongs to a world of imperial masculinity, public pressure and self-command.

The poem is framed as advice from an older speaker to a younger person, usually understood as a son. Its famous structure is conditional: if you can do this, and this, and this, then you will become fully mature. That repeated "if" creates a long test of character. The poem does not imagine virtue as one grand heroic gesture, but as a sequence of disciplined responses to trial. Can you stay calm while others panic? Can you trust yourself without becoming arrogant? Can you be lied about without sinking into hatred? Kipling's ideal person is not untouched by difficulty, but trained by it.

One of the poem's strongest qualities is its emphasis on emotional balance. It praises confidence, but not vanity; patience, but not passivity; ambition, but not addiction to success. The speaker repeatedly asks for opposites to be held together. One must dream, but not be ruled by dreams; think, but not make thought the whole purpose of life; meet triumph and disaster, but treat both as impostors. This is the poem's most enduring wisdom. Success and failure are both unstable teachers. Either can distort the self if taken too seriously.

The poem also has a strong ethic of endurance. Kipling imagines moments when all one's gains are lost, when the body is exhausted, when the heart and nerve and sinew must keep serving after they seem spent. This is stirring, but it is also demanding almost to the point of severity. The poem admires self-mastery so deeply that it leaves little room for fragility, rest or mutual dependence. Modern readers may find its ideal bracing, but also somewhat unforgiving. It speaks powerfully to resilience, yet it can sound as though suffering should always be met by tightening the jaw and carrying on.

That tension is part of why If remains worth reading carefully rather than merely quoting. Kipling's reputation is complicated by his association with empire, and the poem's ideal of manhood reflects the values of its age: stoicism, restraint, honour, discipline and command under pressure. The Poetry Foundation notes both Kipling's immense popularity and the later reassessment of his imperial attitudes. If is not a poem about conquest in any direct sense, but it does express a code shaped by the imperial culture in which Kipling wrote. Its virtues are real, yet the world behind them should not be ignored.

For modern readers, If still has power because it gives memorable language to the difficult art of keeping one's character under strain. Its best lines do not promise an easy life. They imagine a person who can remain fair-minded, steady and purposeful when surrounded by confusion, accusation, loss or temptation. At the same time, the poem's final reward, becoming "a Man", carries gendered assumptions that modern readers may reasonably question. Its deeper value may lie less in that final label than in the discipline it describes: the effort to remain humane, courageous and clear when life is doing its best to knock the furniture over.