"If"

John Locke

Bringing Light and Justice to the World
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One helluva poem and much needed right now with the world burning.

"If" by Rudyard Kipling.

To the glory of mankind and this world. ❤️❤️

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!
 
I thought the thread starter was the song.

If a picture paints a thousand words
Then why can't I paint you?
The words will never show
The you I've come to know

If a face could launch a thousand ships
Then where am I to go?
There's no one home but you
You're all that's left me too
And when my love for life is running dry
You come and pour yourself on me

If a man could be two places at one time
I'd be with you
Tomorrow and today
Beside you all the way

If the world should stop revolving
Spinning slowly down to die
I'd spend the end with you
And when the world was through
Then one by one the stars would all go out
Then you and I would simply fly away
 
I love Kipling. My favorite is "In the Neolithic Age," which I have yet to figure out is a message of hope or despair.

IN THE Neolithic Age savage warfare did I wage
For food and fame and woolly horses' pelt.
I was singer to my clan in that dim, red Dawn of Man,
And I sang of all we fought and feared and felt.

Yea, I sang as now I sing, when the Prehistoric spring
Made the piled Biscayan ice-pack split and shove;
And the troll and gnome and dwerg, and the Gods of Cliff and Berg
Were about me and beneath me and above.

But a rival, of Solutré, told the tribe my style was outré—
'Neath a tomahawk, of diorite, he fell
And I left my views on Art, barbed and tanged, below the heart
Of a mammothistic etcher at Grenelle.

Then I stripped them, scalp from skull, and my hunting-dogs fed full,
And their teeth I threaded neatly on a thong;
And I wiped my mouth and said, "It is well that they are dead,
For I know my work is right and theirs was wrong."

But my Totem saw the shame; from his ridgepole-shrine he came,
And he told me in a vision of the night: —
"There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
"And every single one of them is right!"

* * * *

Then the silence closed upon me till They put new clothing on me
Of whiter, weaker flesh and bone more frail;
. And I stepped beneath Time's finger, once again a tribal singer,
And a minor poet certified by Traill!

Still they skirmish to and fro, men my messmates on the snow
When we headed off the aurochs turn for turn;
When the rich Allobrogenses never kept amanuenses,
And our only plots were piled in lakes at Berne.

Still a cultured Christian age sees us scuffle, squeak, and rage,
Still we pinch and slap and jabber, scratch and dirk;
Still we let our business slide—as we dropped the half-dressed hide—
To show a fellow-savage how to work.

Still the world is wondrous large,—seven seas from marge to marge—
And it holds a vast of various kinds of man;
And the wildest dreams of Kew are the facts of Khatmandhu
And the crimes of Clapham chaste in Martaban.

Here's my wisdom for your use, as I learned it when the moose
And the reindeer roamed where Paris roars to-night:—
"There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
"And—every—single—one—of—them—is—right!"


I guess it's both, offering the way of hope but resigned to history repeating itself and the message going unheeded.
 
Short poem from a dear and brilliant friend who owns an art gallery out in Napa Valley. Since the shelter in place order they have been completely shut down in what they thought was the happiest place on earth, wine and cheese country,

Still the Angels

Again they called to heaven
When contagion laid them low,
Again the angels came from earth
In answer to the blow.
The caring hands that fought for life
While risking their own breath
Deserve the credit paid, instead,
To one who would send death.

~ Quent Cordair
2020
 
Short poem from a dear and brilliant friend who owns an art gallery out in Napa Valley. Since the shelter in place order they have been completely shut down in what they thought was the happiest place on earth, wine and cheese country,

Still the Angels

Again they called to heaven
When contagion laid them low,
Again the angels came from earth
In answer to the blow.
The caring hands that fought for life
While risking their own breath
Deserve the credit paid, instead,
To one who would send death.

~ Quent Cordair
2020

Hook a brother up... :coffee:
 
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