Where Does Met Art Get Their Models

"IF" Rudyard Kipling

To inaugurate this blog and as the first entry I put this poem, my favorite, the British writer Rudyard Kipling.

If you can keep your head when all about you
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 without
tired by waiting, Or being lied, you pay with lies,
Or being hated, do not give rise to hatred,
and still not 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
the same way those two impostors ;
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 put your life to, broken, And stoop and build
with old tools.

If you can heap of all your winnings And risk
a coin flip,
and lose, and start again from the beginning
and never say anything that you lost;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
to play your turn long after they are gone ,
and so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which
says: Resist.

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with kings
and not lose the common touch
if the enemies and friends can not hurt,
if all men count with you, but none too much if you can fill

unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of travel;
Yours is the Earth and everything that inhabits it, and-
that is, "you will Man, son.