With apologies to Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your chips when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust your raise when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their re-raise too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being bluffed 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 shove--and not make shoves your master,
If you can bluff--but not make bluffs your aim;
If you can meet with bad beats and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth that's spoken
Twisted by Kings to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the Queens you gave your life to, broken,
And scoop and build your stack up with the great seven two:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of the river,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To bet the turn with absolute trash that's gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold Em!"
If you can talk trash with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or pass with AK -- nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men bow before you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds" worth of solid staring,
Yours is the Earth and everything that"s in it,
And--which is more--you"ll be a Man, my son!
