Morals & Mores

An Old Joke :
Q. Do you like Kipling ?
A. I don't know. I've never tried it !

Among my literary favourites when I was a boy, alongside H.G.Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jules Verne, Mark Twain and W.E.Johns, was Rudyard Kipling. He was a writer and poet of his times, towards the end of the Victorian era with its attitude to morals and the God-given rights of the British Empire. Despite these influences, he wrote about great adventures, and his "Jungle Book" tales are still favourites today even when they have been Disneyfied.

Over the years the social critics have unsheathed their cutlasses and set about him savagely, claiming (quite correctly in some instances) that he was jingoistic, militaristic, simplistic, paternalistic, moralistic and several other -istics. But he could write stories that appealed to the youth of his day, and even wrote poems that boys enjoyed reading.

One of his poems, "If", became a favourite of mine and may even have helped to form some of my attitudes and behaviours. Throughout the years the poem has often resurfaced, sometimes in obscure or unexpected corners. Each time it does, I still feel a tingle of recognition and pleasure. Here it is again.

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 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 the things you gave your life to, broken
And stoop and build them 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 hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them, "Hold on !"

If you can talk to 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 won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907, so he must have been well-regarded once. I continue to enjoy him !