Rudyard Kipling
Poetry Newsletter 1-17-06
Welcome to the Poetry Newsletter, a place for poets and poetry lovers to read, learn, and be inspired.
"For suddenly, I saw you there
And through foggy London town
The sun was shining everywhere…"
–George Gershwin
****Advertisement
Need to write a speech for a wedding?
Click here…
*****
Daily Poetry
If
By Rudyard Kipling
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!
This legendary poem by Kipling makes fine use of an equally legendary poetic tool: iambic pentameter. The lines are each divided into five feet. Each foot is a combination of syllables stressed in various ways. We’ll get more into these terms in future newsletters.
The term iambic refers to the most common metric foot in the English language. This is a combination of two syllables that begin with one unstressed or short syllable and is followed by a stressed or long syllable. Take the first line of the second stanza for example: “If you can dream and not make dreams your master.” The first two words, “if” and “you” make up the first foot. The second word is stressed. Then the next foot, “can dream” is also spoken with the stress on the second syllable.
The entire poem is written with iambic metric feet and there are five on each line, thus the pentameter, or five meters.
Most of us actually speak this way naturally and the easy rhythm set up by this arrangement of stresses recurs frequently even in modern verse. Think of it like a beat that sounds like this: da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM.
**Refer a friend to Poetry Newsletter**
Poetry Lesson
Iamb, or iambic is the most common metrical foot in English, German, and Russian verse. It common in many other languages as well. It consists of two syllables, a short or unaccented syllable followed by a long or accented syllable.
Example: From Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale” this stanza shows his use of iambic pentameter:
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,–
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.