50 recently unearthed Kipling poems are to be published, along with 1,300 of the renowned writer’s other poems, in the Cambridge Edition of The Poems of Rudyard Kipling on 7th March. Scholar Thomas Pinney found the latest additions to Kipling’s works in a multitude of hiding places, including during renovations on a Manhattan house and amongst family papers. He notes that “Kipling has long been neglected by scholars probably for political reasons. His texts have never properly been studied but things are starting to change,” hinting at the impact the publishing of these unseen works will have on the way Kipling is currently viewed and studied. The poems are based on a multitude of topics, from World War One to comic verse, and will no doubt please Kipling fans worldwide, eager for more poems capable of generating the same reaction as his best loved work.
Often voted as one of the nation’s favourite poems, we thought it only fitting to recite the stanzas of ‘If’, in the hope that the new collection will succeed in provoking the same reception throughout the nation, along with introducing a new generation to the writer.
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!
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