The poem’s final words, ‘you’ll be a man, my son’, suggest that the poem is addressed to Kipling’s actual son, and ‘If-’ should first and foremost be interpreted as a poem addressed to a younger man, listing the necessary characteristics a man should acquire or cultivate in order to be a paragon of manly virtue.Īnd what are those virtues? Stoicism looms large in Kipling’s poem – that is, the acknowledgment that, whilst you cannot always prevent bad things from happening to you, you can deal with them in a good way. Kipling knew Jameson, and recorded in Something of Myself: ‘Among the verses in Rewards was one set called “If” … They were drawn from Jameson’s character, and contained counsels of perfection most easy to give.’ However, it would be easy to overstate the role that the Jameson raid had on ‘If-’, and it would appear that Kipling’s (posthumously published) memoir is the first time that this link is mentioned. Instead, Jameson’s bungled military action helped to create the climate that would lead to the Second Boer War a few years later. Jameson intended to rouse the British expatriates living in the Transvaal to rise up against the Boer government, but his fellow Brits showed no inclination to revolt. Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,Īnd-which is more-you’ll be a Man, my son!Īccording to Kipling in his autobiography, Something of Myself (1937), the origins of ‘If-’ lie in the failed Jameson raid of 1895-6, when the British colonial statesman Leander Starr Jameson led a raid against the South African (Boer) Republic over the New Year weekend. With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, If all men count with you, but none too much If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, Or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch,

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Rudyard kipling poem