If—
Thirty-two lines of conditions addressed to a son, holding off the main clause until the last two: keeping your head, trusting yourself while allowing for doubt, treating triumph and disaster as the same kind of impostor, and risking everything on one turn of pitch-and-toss without mentioning the loss afterwards. Kipling said the model was Leander Starr Jameson, whose raid on the Transvaal had failed and who had taken the blame in silence. It was voted Britain's favourite poem in 1995 and has been read ever since as both a code and a parody of one.
Open If— in the archive — filters, lineage graph and full facet browsing.
Attributes
Genre
Conflict
Mode / tone
Culture / tradition
Closest analogues
- 90% · 7 shared
- 72% · 6 shared
- 72% · 6 shared
- 69% · 6 shared
- 69% · 6 shared
- 69% · 6 shared