Rudyard Kipling

British · 1865 – 1936

Jump to the poems

Rudyard Kipling, photographed by Bain News Service

Photograph by Bain News Service. Public domain.

What Serany thinks about Rudyard Kipling

Traditional

Who they are

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay in 1865 and won the Nobel Prize for Literature at forty-one, the first writer in English to be given it. His son John, the boy "If—" was written for, was killed at Loos in 1915, aged eighteen.

Why we'd read them at a funeral

He is the poet English families reach for when they want someone steady. After the war he chose the words for other people's graves: "Known unto God", cut into every headstone where a soldier could not be named, is his.

Our favourite of theirs

If—

Poems by Rudyard Kipling

2 in all

If—

This poem is for someone who got on with things, kept their temper, and didn’t make a fuss when life went against them. The sort of person other people steadied themselves against.

A classicFor a father

1910

2 min

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!

Read the whole poem →

Mother o' Mine

This poem is for a mother whose love never had any conditions on it. The kind that would have followed her children anywhere, and they always knew it.

ComfortingFor a mother

1891

40 sec

If I were hanged on the highest hill, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine! I know whose love would follow me still, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine! If I were drowned in the deepest sea, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine! I know whose tears would come down to me, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine! If I were damned of body and soul, I know whose prayers would make me whole, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!

Read the whole poem →

Are you planning a funeral?

A Serany website keeps the whole funeral in one place: the plans and the details, who is coming, flowers and donations, and somewhere for everyone who knew them to leave a memory.

Create a farewell website See how it works