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Monday, July 07, 2008

Mama's Gonna Make $$

Kipling time, my little pumpkins:
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 wornout 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!
Well - in my case, a woman!

Not only that, but Haleigh is likely to be testifying in court, notwithstanding the attempt of the Massachusetts social services and justice system to declare her dead and see that she got buried. Not bad for a dead kid!

It's a damned good day.

I do not short. It's forbidden under the rules. So I have to wait for the wimps to cut and run.


Comments:
It is nice to see a resurgence of interest in Kipling the last few years.I the Doubleday definitive edition by my left elbow as I type,he is one of the poets I keep going back to.I am glad to hear MoM is going to make $,I suspect quite a few of us who have been around the block a few times will thrive in the tough times ahead.Tom Stone
 
Didn't know you kippled. There's a great deal of wisdom buried in Kipling's verse.
 
Well, of course Kipling is grossly politically incorrect.

Tom, I think the old cynical geezers will do okay by the end. This interim period is going to be rough!
 
Thank you for the Kipling on a Tues. morning. There can be nothing better.
 
Joy - how about Kipling on a Monday morning?
 
My Mondays are reserved soley for Cavalier poets. That's why I had to wait until today to read this fine post :D
 
Okay, you got me. What genre of poetry suffices for Wednesdays?
 
The Romantics, of course. Blake and Coleridge are guaranteed to get me "over the hump."
 
It's a hell of a story too.
 
Some Kipling poems that I like & are not terribly well known are:

"Tomlinson" about a man who is denied entrance into heaven and...much to his discomfiture...can't get into hell, either.

"McAndrews Hymn"..an elderly ship's engineer reflects on his life and on his Calvinist theology.

"The Mary Gloster"...a dying shipowner talks to the son in whom he is very disappointed.
 
The poem for engineers is the "Hymn of Breaking Strain", though "The Sons of Martha" is a close second.

"The Gods of the Copybook Headings" are probably more appropriate to the situation, though.
 
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