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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheAuldGrump" data-source="post: 1901773" data-attributes="member: 6957">Hmmm, Rudyard Kipling: 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 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 all 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 KiplingRobert W. Service:The Lone TrailYe who know the Lone Trail fain would follow it,Though it lead to glory or the darkness of the pit.Ye who take the Lone Trail, bid your love good-by;The Lone Trail, the Lone Trail follow till you die.The trails of the world be countless, and most of the trails be tried;You tread on the heels of the many, till you come where the ways divide;And one lies safe in the sunlight, and the other is dreary and wan,Yet you look aslant at the Lone Trail, and the Lone Trail lures you on.And somehow you're sick of the highway, with its noise and its easy needs,And you seek the risk of the by-way, and you reck not where it leads.And sometimes it leads to the desert, and the tongue swells out of the mouth,And you stagger blind to the mirage, to die in the mocking drouth.And sometimes it leads to the mountain, to the light of the lone camp-fire,And you gnaw your belt in the anguish of hunger-goaded desire.And sometimes it leads to the Southland, to the swamp where the orchid glows,And you rave to your grave with the fever, and they rob the corpse for its clothes.And sometimes it leads to the Northland, and the scurvy softens your bones,And your flesh dints in like putty, and you spit out your teeth like stones.And sometimes it leads to a coral reef in the wash of a weedy sea,And you sit and stare at the empty glare where the gulls wait greedily.And sometimes it leads to an Arctic trail, and the snows where your torn feet freeze,And you whittle away the useless clay, and crawl on your hands and knees.Often it leads to the dead-pit; always it leads to pain;By the bones of your brothers ye know it, but oh, to follow you're fain.By your bones they will follow behind you, till the ways of the world are made plain.Bid good-by to sweetheart, bid good-by to friend;The Lone Trail, the Lone Trail follow to the end.Tarry not, and fear not, chosen of the true;Lover of the Lone Trail, the Lone Trail waits for you.Edna St. Vincent Millay: The Singing-Woman From The Wood's EdgeWhat should I be but a prophet and a liar,Whose mother was a leprechaun, whose father was a friar?Teethed on a crucifix and cradled under water,What should I be but the fiend's god-daughter?And who should be my playmates but the adder and the frog,That was got beneath a furze-bush and born in a bog?And what should be my singing, that was christened at an altar,But Aves and Credos and Psalms out of the Psalter?You will see such webs on the wet grass, maybe,As a pixie-mother weaves for her baby,You will find such flame at the wave's weedy ebbAs flashes in the meshes of a mer-mother's web,But there comes to birth no common spawnFrom the love of a priest for a leprechaun,And you never have seen and you never will seeSuch things as the things that swaddled me!After all's said and after all's done,What should I be but a harlot and a nun?In through the bushes, on any foggy day,My Da would come a-swishing of the drops away,With a prayer for my death and a groan for my birth,A-mumbling of his beads for all that he was worth.And there sit my Ma, her knees beneath her chin,A-looking in his face and a-drinking of it in,And a-marking in the moss some funny little sayingThat would mean just the opposite of all that he was praying!He taught me the holy-talk of Vesper and of Matin,He heard me my Greek and he heard me my Latin,He blessed me and crossed me to keep my soul from evil,And we watched him out of sight, and we conjured up the devil!Oh, the things I haven't seen and the things I haven't known,What with hedges and ditches till after I was grown,And yanked both ways by my mother and my father,With a "Which would you better?" and a "Which would you rather?"With him for a sire and her for a dam,What should I be but just what I am?The Auld Grump</blockquote>

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