When I was a child, I had to learn many poems by heart.

Was it the same for you?

Looking back on it, I believe that memorization is what sparked my love for poetry. Those verses really came alive when a chorus of grade school kids recited them with enthusiastic expression and dramatic hand gestures! Can’t you just picture it?

The words to many poems are still etched in my memory. It’s nice to recall them from time to time so for this week’s Friday Favorites, I have an old favorite! It never seems to lose its power – no matter how often it’s read.

If

~by 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, my son!

Can you remember a poem that you had to learn?

Happy First Weekend in April, Kids!

And Happy Birthday (story here) to my Dad, who is 85 today.

Hugs all around,