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 man 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 is in it,

And --which is more--you’ll be a man, my son!

.

The following is a Romanian Poem Wrote by Michael Eminescu which would be the equivalent of Shakespeare for the English Culture.

La Steaua

Mihai Eminescu

La steaua care a rasarit

E o cale atit de lunga,

Caci mi de ani i-au trebuit

Lumini sa ne-a ajunga.

.

Poate de mult sa stins in drum

In departari albastre,

Dar raza ei deabea acum

Luci vederi noastre.

.

The Translation:

So far it is athwart the blue
To where yon star appears,
That for its light to reach our view
Has needed thousand years.

Maybe that ages gone it shed
Its glow, then languished in the skies,
Yet only now its rays have sped
Their journey to our eyes.

The icon of the star that died
Slowly the vault ascended;
Time was ere it could first be spied,
We see now what is ended.