I was conflicted when I first read this, because it's beautiful and speaks to the actual tenets of ideal conservative thought: preserving and making accessible the hard-learned lessons of the past.
But like real conservative thought, it conflates these with the fear of good things that are new, such as promoting equality and collective action.
The strongest rebuttal to this poem is acknowledging that comparing our wisdom and foolishness with foreign wisdom and foolishness can inform us of what is truly fundamental.
I memorized both this poem and William Knox's "O why should the spirit of mortal be proud?"^1 as an exercise in rote memorization. It took me a couple of days, but it's now been years and they're still burned in there.
Presumably openly telling coal miners that they need to work harder, when you're a well connected writer was enough to get you cancelled even in those days, hence the need to be so oblique about it.
Very interested to hear the HN crowd's reaction to this one. I like to annoy English grads by telling them that If... [1] is the greatest poem of the 20th century.
Well, you annoyed me by the loss of time spent looking for verification of its date, given that half of Kipling's life fell in the 19th century.
Kipling was a genius, with some notable blind spots, to call them no worse. My summary is to say that given the qualities, brave, clever, and honest, groups other than the English got to choose at most two. (OK, the Scots could pick three, also.)
I would say that Kipling's genius comes through far more in his fiction than in his verse.
But like real conservative thought, it conflates these with the fear of good things that are new, such as promoting equality and collective action.
The strongest rebuttal to this poem is acknowledging that comparing our wisdom and foolishness with foreign wisdom and foolishness can inform us of what is truly fundamental.