Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was an English poet, journalist, and author of short stories. An unbending defender of the British imperial project, his reputation has suffered in recent years. Many of his detractors today echo the judgment rendered by George Orwell, who called him, in positively venomous terms, a morally insensitive, aesthetically disgusting, brutal, sadistic, jingo imperialist. Well then! Despite Orwell's unflattering assessment of his near contemporary, Kipling's finest poem, "If--", is one you'll want to commit to memory. It's a brief, beautiful work that you can memorize in but a few weeks' time. Untarnished by politics, inspirational from its first word till its last, "If--" is, without a doubt, one of the great poems of all time.

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