all men count but none too much

Speaking of memorizing poems so that you can recite them,
there was a poem I'd barely heard --
read aloud by my mother when I was a child, maybe,
or school --
and hadn't thought of in a long time, and
one evening,
in a room with a fire in the fireplace,
a man who was about 90 at the time
recited that poem when the topic of the first lines

("if you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you...")

came up in conversation.
He had learned that poem -- memorized it -- in public school so long ago -- the
1930s (if not the 20s - !) and could say it to us that night, which was -- probably sometime between the years 2000 and 2003. It was pretty unexpected, and amazing.

The poem was "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 imposters 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!

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In that earlier era, educators thought that having students memorize things was good. They don't believe in that much anymore -- that approach has been gone since -- probably the 1950s.

-30-