Words To Live By
Here are some of Ekone's favorite poems and
passages
offered in the hope that they will serve you
well all through your life.
If
--Rudyard Kipling
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 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
(Woman), my son (daughter)*!
*the feminine form here is our addition as
Kipling wrote this for his son
Stay Together
--Gary Snyder
In the next century
or the one beyond that
they say,
are valleys, pastures.
We can meet there in peace
if we make it.
To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:
stay together
learn the flowers