The poem IF by Rudyard Kipling Bill Cosby found great solace in Kiplings poem after his 27-year-old son Ennis was shot and killed in 1997. In a January 1998 issue of Jet magazine, he said he found the first stanza especially comforting. If was very calming, very calming, he told an interviewer, Because there were times you wanted to yell out and just be a nasty person. Reading that paragraph over and over, I was able to suppress it. For your reading and reflecting pleasure, here is the entire poem: 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, dont deal in lies, Or being hated, dont give way to hating, And yet dont 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 youve 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 breath 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 thats in it, And—which is more—youll be a Man my son!
Posted on: Mon, 08 Dec 2014 19:16:56 +0000
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