‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling

Laura González Paniagua

Grado en Estudios Ingleses

IF...
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’ by Rudyard Kipling
Laura González Paniagua
Grado en Estudios Ingleses

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!

Rudyard Kipling

The poem I will talk is called 'If' of Rudyard Kipling, an American author of the nineteenth
century, who in 1907 won the Nobel Prize for Literature. I will deal the aspects more important of it:
In the first paragraph, I'm going to talk about the structure and the rhyme scheme. After this, I will
transcribe phonetically, the final words of each stanza: alliterations, diphthongs, stress and so on;
following it, I’m going to tell something about the alliterations and the sounds of the words, and
finally, the conclusion.

If is written in iambic pentameter consisting of five feet with two syllable units. The syllable units
consist of the first being unstressed and the second being stressed.

u / u / u / u / u/ u

‘If you can keep your head when all about you’

The poem is written in 8 stanzas with thirty-two rhyming lines consisting of the rhyme scheme.
The rhyme scheme of the poem ‘If’ is. In each stanza, the 1st and 3rd, 2nd and 4th, 5th and 7th, 6th and 8th,
9th and 11th, 10th and 12th, 13th and 15th, 14th and 16th, 17th and 19th, 18th and 20th, 21st and 23rd, 22nd
and 24th, 25th and 27th, 26th and 28th, 29th and 31st, 30th and 32nd lines rhyme:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings A

And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss, B

And lose, and start again at your beginnings A

And never breath a word about your loss; B

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew C

To serve your turn long after they are gone, D

 ‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling
Laura González Paniagua
Grado en Estudios Ingleses

And so hold on when there is nothing in you C

Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!" d

In the first stanza, the rhyme is AAAA. In this first one and the third lines, the rhyme is AA, "you"
and "you" (/juː/). This two lines end with the same word, which have the same sound /juː/, a long
vowel. In the second one and the fourth, the rhyme is also AA, "you" and "too" (/juː/) and /tuː/), here
appears again the same vowel than before, /uː/.

In the second stanza, the rhyme is BCBC. In the lines fifth and seventh, the rhyme is BB,
"waiting" and "heating" (/ˈweɪtɪŋ/ and /'heɪtɪŋ/). This two words rhyme because both two words end in
/ɪ/ plus /ŋ/, which is voiced, nasal consonant. The second stanza finishes with the rhyme CC in the lines
sixth and eighth in its final words, "lies" and "wise" (/laɪs/ and /waɪz/), which rhyme because have the
diphthong /aɪ/ and the final words, /s/ and /z/ are alveolar; however, between this two letters there is
one difference, which is that /s/ is voiceless and /z/ is voiced.

In the third stanza, the rhyme is DEDE. In the ninth and the eleventh lines, the rhyme is DD,
"master" and "disaster" (/ˈmɑːstər/ and /dɪˈzɑːstər/). This two words rhyme because at the end, both
of them have a schwa and a /r/, which is voiced and an approximant liquid. In the tenth and twelfth
lines, the rhyme is EE "aim" and "same" (/"eɪm"/ and (/seɪm/), which end with the diphthong /eɪ/ and
the final consonant /m/, that is a voiced, nasal, labial sound.

In the fourth stanza, the rhyme is FGFG. In the thirteenth and fifteenth lines, the rhyme is FF,
"spoken" and "broken" (/ˈspəʊkən/ and /ˈbrəʊkən/), that rhyme because they end in the voiced,
alveolar, nasal /n/. The first stanza finishes with the rhime GG in the lines fourteenth and sixteenth in
its final words, "fools" and "tools" (/fuːls/ and /tuːls/), which rhyme because they have the long vowel
/u/ before /l/ and both two words end with the voiced, fricative, alveolar, deaf consonant.

In the fifth stanza, the rhyme is HIHI. In the seventeenth and nineteenth the rhyme is HH,
"winnings" and "beginnings" (/ˈwɪnɪŋz/ and /bɪˈgɪnɪŋz/), which rhyme because both two ended with /ɪ/
plus the voiced velar nasal /ŋ/, and they end with the voiced alveolar /z/. The lines eighteenth and
twentieth have the rhyme II, "toss" and "loss" (/tɒs/ and /lɒs/), that rhyme due to they share the
sound /ɒ/ and end with the voiceless, fricative, alveolar deaf /s/.

In the sixth stanza, the rhyme is AJAJ. In the lines twenty-first and twenty-third, the rhyme is AA,
"sinew" and "you" (/ˈsɪnjuː/ and /juː/), which rhyme because they end with the semivowel sound
palatal /j/ followed by the long vowel /uː/; as in the first one stanza. The rhyme in the lines twenty-
 ‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling
Laura González Paniagua
Grado en Estudios Ingleses

second and twenty-forth is JJ, "gone" and "on" (/gɒn/ and /ɒn/), which rhyme because both two words
end in the consonant sound /ɒ/ plus the voiced, alveolar nasal sound /n/.

In the seventh stanza, the rhyme is AKAK. The lines twenty-five and twenty-seven have the
rhyme AA, "virtue" and "you" (/ˈv3ːtjuː/ and /juː/), that rhyme because both two have the same
consonant, the voiced, semivowel palatal /j/ and they end with the long /uː/;as in the first one and the
sixth stanzas. In the twenty-sixth and twenty-eighth lines, the rhyme is KK, "touch" and "much" (/tʌtʃ/
and /mʌtʃ/), which share the vowel /ʌ/, and the sound /tʃ/, that is voiceless affricate.

In the eighth stanza, the rhyme is IMIM. In the twenty-ninth and thirty-first lines the rhyme is II,
"minute" and "it" (/ˈmɪnɪt/ and /ɪt/), that rhyme because they end in /ɪ/ followed by the voiceless,
dental occlusive, deaf consonant /t/. And finally, the thirtieth and thirty-second, whose rhyme is MM,
"run" and "son" (/rʌn/ and /sʌn/) which end in /ʌ/ and with the voiced, alveolar, nasal consonant /n/.

Alliteration is the repetition of the consonant sound at the beginning of consecutive words.
There are at least two examples of this. The first occurs in stanza 2: “with wornout tools” (line 16).
And the second example is from stanza 4 and says: “sixty seconds” (line 30).

To sum up, this poem is a didactic poem in that it is meant to give instruction or advice, which is
to teach a man what the virtues of leadership are. The language in the poem is informal, or colloquial.
The open lines “keep your head” are a common figure of speech. The poem is also written in four
stanzas of eight rhyming lines, according to the pattern abab cdcd. 'If' takes its name from the
repetition of the word "if" at the start of the first, third, fourth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, thirteenth,
nineteenth, twenty-third, twenty-fourth, twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth and twenty-nine lines, each
of which comprise eleven syllables. The second and fourth lines each contain ten syllables. 'If' is
written in iambic pentameter, that consists of lines of five "feet" (two-syllable units) formed from an
initial unstressed syllable and a second stressed syllable, as in the word "because." The eleven-syllable
lines each end with an extra unstressed syllable. It has been a fundamental building block of poetry in
English, used in many poems by many poets from the English Renaissance to the present day.