View source for If—

{{Short description|Poem by Rudyard Kipling}}
{{About|Kipling's poem||If (disambiguation)}}
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{{EngvarB|date=September 2013}}
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{{Infobox poem
|name ="If—"
|image = Kipling If (Doubleday 1910).jpg
|image_size =
|caption = A [[Doubleday (publisher)|Doubleday, Page & Co.]] edition from 1910
|first = ''[[Rewards and Fairies]]''
|author = [[Rudyard Kipling]]
|publication_date = {{Start date and age|1910|paren=yes}}
|publisher = [[Doubleday (publisher)|Doubleday, Page & Company]]
}}
"'''If—'''" is a poem by English poet [[Rudyard Kipling]] (1865–1936), written circa 1895<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.poems007.com/poem/if.html|title= If, poem by Rudyard Kipling : Poems 007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170210080229/http://www.poems007.com/poem/if.html|archive-date=2017-02-10|url-status=dead|access-date=2018-07-25}}</ref> as a tribute to [[Leander Starr Jameson]]. It is a literary example of [[Victorian era|Victorian-era]] values.<ref name="gradesaver">{{cite web|url=http://www.gradesaver.com/rudyard-kipling-poems/study-guide/section2/|title=Rudyard Kipling: Poems Study Guide: Summary and Analysis of "If—"|last=Osborne|first=Kristen|date=28 April 2013|editor-last=McKeever|editor-first=Christine|publisher=GradeSaver|access-date=29 May 2013}}</ref> The poem, first published in ''[[Rewards and Fairies]]'' (1910) following the story "Brother Square-Toes", is written in the form of paternal advice to the poet's son, [[John Kipling|John]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Martyris |first=Nina |date=25 September 2015 |title=When Rudyard Kipling’s Son Went Missing |url=https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/when-rudyard-kiplings-son-went-missing |url-status=bot: unknown |archive-url=https://archive.today/20230830235345/https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/when-rudyard-kiplings-son-went-missing |archive-date=30 August 2023 |access-date=30 August 2023 |website=The New Yorker }}</ref>

==Publication==
"If—" first appeared in the "Brother Square Toes" chapter of the book ''[[Rewards and Fairies]]'', a collection of Kipling's poetry and short-story fiction published in 1910. In his posthumously published autobiography, ''Something of Myself'' (1937), Kipling said that, in writing the poem, he was inspired by the character of [[Leander Starr Jameson]],<ref name=something>Kipling, Rudyard. "Something of Myself." ''Rudyard Kipling: Something of Myself and Other Autobiographical Writings''. Ed. Thomas Pinney. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991. p. 111. Print.</ref> leader of the failed [[Jameson Raid]] against the [[South African Republic]] to overthrow the [[Boers|Boer]] government of [[Paul Kruger]]. The failure of that [[mercenary]] [[coup d'état]] aggravated the political tensions between the [[United Kingdom]] and the Boers, which led to the [[Second Boer War]] (1899–1902).<ref>"The New Britannica Encyclopædia", 15th Edition, volume 6, pp. 489–490.</ref><ref>{{cite web|last=Halsall|first=Paul |url=http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/kipling-if.html|title=Rudyard Kipling: If |work=[[Internet History Sourcebooks Project]] |publisher=Fordham University|date=July 1998 |access-date=6 November 2011}}</ref>

==Text==
{{poem quote|
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 [[Pitching pennies|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!<ref>{{cite book |last=Kipling |first=Rudyard |author-link=Rudyard Kipling |title=rewards and Fairies |date=1910 |publisher=Macmillan |location=London |edition=First}}</ref>
}}

==Reception==
As an evocation of Victorian-era stoicism, the "[[stiff upper lip]]" self-discipline that popular culture rendered into a British national [[virtue]] and character trait, "If—" remains a cultural touchstone.<ref>{{cite web|title=Spartans and Stoics – Stiff Upper Lip |url=http://www.icons.org.uk/theicons/collection/stiff-upper-lip/biography/spartans-and-stoics-with-stiff-upper-lips |work=Icons of England |publisher=Culture24 |access-date=20 February 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091212030541/http://www.icons.org.uk/theicons/collection/stiff-upper-lip/biography/spartans-and-stoics-with-stiff-upper-lips |archive-date=12 December 2009 }}</ref> The British cultural-artifact status of the poem is evidenced by the [[parody|parodies]] of the poem, and by its popularity among Britons.<ref>{{cite book|last=Jones|first=Emma|title=The Literary Companion|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WELwa9Sds-EC&pg=PA25|year=2004|publisher=Robson|isbn=978-1861057983|page=25}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Robinson|first=Mike|title=Literature and Tourism|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ePsxlk3tTOsC&pg=PA61 |page=61 |year=2002|publisher=The Thomson Corporation|isbn=1844800741}}</ref>

Kipling himself in the last year of his life took wry note of the poem's ubiquity:
<blockquote>Once started, the mechanisation of the age made <nowiki>[the verses]</nowiki> snowball themselves in a way that startled me. Schools, and places where they teach, took them for the suffering Young—which did me no good with the Young when I met them later. ('Why did you write that stuff? I’ve had to write it out twice as an impot.') They were printed as cards to hang up in offices and bedrooms; illuminated text-wise and anthologised to weariness. Twenty-seven of the Nations of the Earth translated them into their seven-and-twenty tongues, and printed them on every sort of fabric.<ref name=something/></blockquote>

In 1931, Elizabeth Lincoln Otis wrote "An 'If' for Girls" in response to Kipling's poem. Otis's poem was published in the anthology ''Father: An Anthology of Verse'' (1931).<ref>{{Cite web |date=2023-09-04 |title=Elizabeth Lincoln Otis |url=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/elizabeth-lincoln-otis |access-date=2023-09-04 |website=Poetry Foundation}}</ref>

[[T. S. Eliot]] included the poem in his 1941 collection ''[[A Choice of Kipling's Verse]]''.

In India, a framed copy of the poem was affixed to the wall before the study desk in the cabins of the officer cadets at the [[National Defence Academy]] at [[Pune]] and the [[Indian Naval Academy]] at Ezhimala.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Mishra|first1=Piyush|last2=(India Interrupted Blog)|first2=Anshuman|title=If – Rudyard Kipling|url=https://mishrapiyush.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/if-an-inspiration/if-by-rudyard-kipling/|website=mishrapiyush.wordpress.com|date=10 September 2012 |publisher=Word Press|access-date=15 December 2015}}</ref> In Britain, the first verse is set, in granite setts, into the pavement of the promenade in [[Westward Ho!]] in Devon.<ref>{{Citation|url=https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/incredible-drone-footage-reveals-poetry-3388225|title=Incredible drone footage reveals poetry along Devon seafront that's hidden in plain sight|first=Joel|last=Cooper|date=3 October 2019|access-date=4 November 2023|website=devonlive.com}}</ref> The third and fourth lines of the second stanza of the poem: "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster / and treat those two impostors just the same" are written on the wall of the players' entrance to the [[Centre Court]] at the [[All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club]], where the [[Wimbledon Championships]] are held.<ref>[https://www.facebook.com/wimbledon/photos/a.94472193731/10153652234698732/?comment_id=10153652439453732 Official Wimbledon page on Facebook]</ref> These same lines appear at the [[West Side Tennis Club]] in [[Forest Hills, Queens|Forest Hills, New York City]], where the [[US Open (tennis)|US Open]] was played until 1977.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Smith|first1=Liz|title=Round One at Forest Hills|volume=25|url=https://www.si.com/vault/1966/08/29/609062/round-one-at-forest-hills|access-date=31 December 2017|work=Sports Illustrated|issue=9|date=29 August 1966}}</ref>

The Indian writer [[Khushwant Singh]] considered the poem "the essence of the message of ''[[Bhagavad Gita|The Gita]]'' in English."<ref>[[Khushwant Singh]], [http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?211656 "Review of ''The Book of Prayer'' by Renuka Narayanan"]  {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131213061351/http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?211656 |date=13 December 2013 }} , 2001; review and Gita reference cited in [https://indiacurrents.com/if-you-can-keep-your-head-when-all-about-you-are-losing-theirs/ "If – You Can Keep Your Head When All About You Are Losing Theirs"] by Mukund Acharya, ''[[indiacurrents.com]]'', December 26, 2023 (possibly sourced to Wikipedia).{{Citation needed|date=October 2024}}</ref>

[[Charles McGrath (critic)|Charles McGrath]], a former deputy editor of ''[[The New Yorker]]'' and a former editor of the ''[[New York Times Book Review]]'', wrote that when he was in school, "they had to recite Kipling's 'If—' every day, right after the [[Pledge of Allegiance]]."<ref>{{Cite magazine|url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/08/rudyard-kipling-in-america|title=Rudyard Kipling in America|last=McGrath|first=Charles|date=1 July 2019|magazine=The New Yorker|access-date=2020-04-04}}</ref>

[[Pablo Neruda]]—like Kipling, a Nobel laureate—found a framed ornamental copy of the poem near the [[Jacobo Fitz-James Stuart, 17th Duke of Alba|Duke of Alba's]] bedside in the [[Palacio de Liria]]. However, his view was not favourable, and he referred to it as "that pedestrian and sanctimonious poetry, precursor of the ''[[Reader's Digest]]'', whose intellectual level seems to me no higher than that of the Duke of Alba's boots."<ref>[[:es:Confieso que he vivido|Confieso que he vivido]], § Los Palacios Reconquistados. The reference to boots is explained by the context.{{Circular reference|date=September 2021}}</ref>

In the [[BBC]]'s 1996 nationwide poll, "If—" was voted the UK's favourite poem, gaining twice as many votes as the runner-up.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Nation's Favourite Poems|page=5|date=1996|publisher=BBC}}</ref>

The boxer [[Muhammad Ali]] was known to carry the poem in his wallet throughout his life as a guiding principle.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Francisco |first=Tony U. |date=2023-03-12 |title=The Poem That Drove Muhammad Ali To Greatness |url=https://medium.com/hpxl/the-poem-that-drove-muhammad-ali-to-greatness-a5d287b6bc07 |access-date=2023-03-30 |website=High-Performance Lifestyle}}</ref>

In 2006, the French philosopher [[Olivier Rey]] called "If—" an example of paternal tyranny, in which the father imposes a list of impossible conditions on his son.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Une folle solitude. Le fantasme de l'homme auto-construit|publisher=Le Seuil|year=2006|isbn=9782020863803|pages=116|language=fr}}</ref>

==See also==
* "[[Invictus]]" by William Ernest Henley
* "[[Citizenship in a Republic|The Man in the Arena]]" by Theodore Roosevelt
* "[[Desiderata]]" by Max Ehrmann
* "[[The Gods of the Copybook Headings]]" by Rudyard Kipling
* "[[Henry Newbolt#"Vitae Lampada"|Vitaï Lampada]]" by Henry Newbolt
* [[Agency (philosophy)]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
{{Wikisource|If—}}
* [[commons:File:If rudyard kipling.ogg|Reading of "If—"]] on Wikimedia Commons
* {{librivox book | title=If | author=Rudyard Kipling}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20110213052406/http://www.library.dal.ca/DUASC/Digital-Collections/Kipling/Editions Authentic digital editions archive of "If—" ]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20161005141009/http://www.tarotvignettes.com/images/vignettes/2016/large/130916202800024.jpg Staging of "If—" as a comic strip]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6uUbgy5UyM If by Rudyard Kipling on YouTube]

{{Rudyard Kipling}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:If}}
[[Category:1910 poems]]
[[Category:Doubleday, Page & Company books]]
[[Category:Poetry by Rudyard Kipling]]
[[Category:1890s poems]]
[[Category:Victorian poetry]]
[[Category:National symbols of the United Kingdom]]