DISSENDIUM

If I can keep my head when all about me, are loosing theirs and blaming it on me If I can trust myself when all men doubt me, but make allowance for their doubting too If I 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 I can dream and not make dreams my master, and if I can think and not make thoughts my aim If I can make one heap off all my winnings and risk it on one turn of pitch and toss And lose, and start again at my beginnings, and never breathe a word about my loss If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt me If I can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run.

Tears, idle tears. I know not what they mean. Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes In looking on the happy autumn-fields, And thinking of the days that are no more Sad and strange as in the dark summer dawns The earlist pipe of half-awaken’d birds To dying ears, when unto dying eyes So sad, so strange, the days that no more