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IF
Rudyard Kipling Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you Celebrated author and poet. Born in Bombay,
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, India, December 30, 1865. His writings frequently
give Masonic allusions peculiarly significant to the
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, Craft. The story of The Man Who Would be King
But make allowance for their doubting too; is a good specimen of the kind in question. His
poems, the Mother Lodge, the Palace, and L'Envoito
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Life's Handicap are splendidly typical. He was made
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, an honorary member of Canongate Kilwinning
Lodge at Edinburgh. Brother Kipling was initiated
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, in Freemasonry at the age of twenty and a half, by
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise: special dispensation, in the Hope and Perseverance
Lodge, No. 782, at Lahore. In 1888 he joined the
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; Independence and Philanthropy Lodge, No. 391,
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim; meeting at Allahabad, Bengal. In the issue of the
London Times quoted in the Freemason, March 28,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster 1925, there is an interesting statement from Brother
And treat those two impostors just the same; Kipling regarding his active service in his own Lodge
in Lahore, Punjab, East Indies.
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 He was Entered for membership by a Hindu,
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, Passed by a Muslim, and Raised by an Englishman.
The Tyler was an Indian Jew. This is what he writes:
And lose, and start again at your beginnings "I was Secretary for some years of the Lodge of
And never breathe a word about your loss; Hope and Perseverance, No. 782, E.C., Lahore,
English Constitution, which included Brethren of at
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew least four creeds. I was entered by a member from
To serve your turn long after they are gone, Brahmo Somaj, a Hindu, passed by a Mohammedan,
and raised by an Englishman. Our Tyler was an
And so hold on when there is nothing in you Indian Jew. We met, of course, on the level, and the
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’ only difference anyone would notice was that at our
banquets some of the Brethren, who were debarred
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, by caste rules from eating food not ceremonially
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch, prepared, sat over empty plates."
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!
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