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 meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters 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 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 all 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!

Rudyard Kipling

The Stranger

The Stranger within my gate,
He may be true or kind,
But he does not talk my talk –
I cannot feel his mind.
I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,
But not the soul behind.

The men of my own stock
They may do ill or well,
But they tell the lies I am wonted to.
They are used to the lies I tell,
And we do not need interpreters
When we go to buy and sell.

The Stranger within my gates,
He may be evil or good,
But I cannot tell what powers control
What reasons sway his mood;
Nor when the Gods of his far-off land
Shall repossess his blood.

The men of my own stock,
Bitter bad they may be,
But, at least, they hear the things I hear,
And see the things I see;
And whatever I think of them and their likes
They think of the likes of me.

This was my father’s belief
And this is also mine:
Let the corn be all one sheaf —
And the grapes be all one vine,
Ere our children’s teeth are set on edge
By bitter bread and wine.

Rudyard Kipling

A Song of the White Men

Now, this is the cup the White Men drink
When they go to right a wrong,
And that is the cup of the old world’s hate –
Cruel and strained and strong.
We have drunk that cup – and a bitter, bitter cup
And tossed the dregs away.
But well for the world when the White Men drink
To the dawn of the White Man’s day!

Now, this is the road that the White Men tread
When they go to clean a land –
Iron underfoot and levin overhead
And the deep on either hand.
We have trod that road – and a wet and windy road
Our chosen star for guide.
Oh, well for the world when the White Men tread
Their highway side by side!

Now, this is the faith that the White Men hold
When they build their homes afar –
“Freedom for ourselves and freedom for our sons
And, failing freedom, War.”
We have proved our faith — bear witness to our faith,
Dear souls of freemen slain!
Oh, well for the world when the White Men join
To prove their faith again!

Rudyard Kipling

Creation

All was darkness.
There was darkness over all.
There was nothing that could be seen.
But in the darkness; in the nothing, there was something.
And the something was that which is just beyond.
And, the something sought comfort and moved mindlessly to break out of the cloaking darkness, as it sought to be.
It struggled with the nothing that pulled it down.
It struggled to be.
It broke through the darkness, and with it came the light.
And, this was comfortable, so it remained.
And the something spun on its axis.
As it spun, so too did the light spin.
And, it became the cosmic whirlwind, and it created matter from out of the light.
And it grew as it fed on the nothing that was never really nothing, but was always part of the something.
It fed on itself, that was not itself.
It threw out arms and they spun around and around.
More of the nothing was pulled into the growing maelstrom, and the nothing fed the something, and the nothing became the food for the light and for matter, as it passed through the light, and was transformed.

And this was the cornucopia and the cosmic womb of existence.
And, from it, all came forth, and to it, all returned, only to be transformed and to come forth once again.
This was the toilet of existence.
And, that which is behind the spinning light and which is of the spinning light but which is more, is the builder and the destroyer of all that is.
And it Was, and it Was not, and it Is and Is not, for all are the same to this that Is, but which is not.
And to think of these things and to try to make them make sense is to look upon the ways of God, and that way, lies madness.
And, it formed the thought, yet it did not form the thought: I am free.
Yet it was not free.
It wasn’t this, and it wasn’t that.
And it was both of these and neither of these at the same time.
It was the seer and the seen; the dreamer and the dream.

It was here, as it was there, yet it was always just behind.
It was as a Will ‘O the Wisp, and the ghost that is sensed but never seen directly.
For it cannot ever be seen directly, and if It is seen, It is not.
And it was the engine of creation and the furnace of destruction.
It was the great idiot shuffler of existence.
It took simple chemicals and forces and shuffled them.
It was as a child playing with blocks.
It built them this way, destroyed them, and did it again.
And again, and again, and again and again for all eternity.
And there was no reason either for the building or for the destroying.
It was neither good nor evil, for such things are human concepts, and have no relevance to It, for they are too small.
It built with no purpose, and it destroyed with no mercy.

From ‘The Outsider’ by H. Millard

In The Lives Of All My Fathers

It is nothing new.
I have been here before.
In the lives of all my fathers have I been here.
The frost is on my cheek,
the salt bites my nostrils,
the wind chants in my ears, and it is an old happening.

I know, now, that my forebears were Vikings.
I was seed of them in their own day.
With them I have raided English coasts,
dared the Pillars of Hercules,
forayed the Mediterranean,
and sat in the high place of government
over the soft sun-warm peoples.

I am Hengist and Horsa;
I am of the ancient heroes even legendary to them.
I have bearded and bitted the frozen seas,
and, aforetime of that,
ere ever the ice ages came to be,
I have dripped my shoulders in reindeer gore,
slain the mastodon and the sabre-tooth,
scratched the record of my prowess
on the walls of deep buried caves – ay,
and suckled she-wolves side by side with my brother cubs,
the scars of whose fangs are now upon me.

Jack London.