Power in Words

I grew up very close to my Granny by location and an emotional bond that I am sure reaches beyond this earthy realm. I love and respect her with a depth that words cannot express. Much of my childhood was shaped by her. She didn't do anything remarkable, but everything she did taught me.

One of the memories I have of her is her collection of books. Old books, many of them from her father. She was an educated woman, studied English at UNC Chapel Hill. She always encouraged me to pick up a book and read. I gained my love for poetry from her and those old books on the shelf. A plethora of great poets like Robert Frost, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe and Ralph Waldo Emerson filled the pages and my mind with immense thought. I came to love The Spider and the Fly, O Captain! My Captain!, and many other great works.

There was this one poem, I can still remember reading it. I was sitting in her living room when she handed me the book and asked me to look it up and read it. It was fabulous and I fell in love with it immediately.  It had a power in it's words that stayed with me.  It moved me, made me feel a need to conquer life, better myself and be a person of great worth.  I still gives chills when I read it.  It's called If by Rudyard Kipling. 

Do you have a poem that you love?  Here's mine (or one of them):

 

                        If 

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 breath 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! 

-Rudyard Kipling