If

I’ve never been a big fan of poetry.

In my parents’ day, it seemed like a large part of your schooling was memorizing poems. Maybe that was because there just wasn’t so much history or scientific knowledge in those days and they had to fill the little blighters’ heads with something.

The only poem I remember from high school was “The Rape of The Lock” by Alexander Pope that we studied in seventh form English. It was very long, and about a posh young woman in 18th century England having a lock of her hair stolen by some rotter  and the ensuing scandal. Not sure why it sticks in my head so much? I must have learnt something from it. Certainly it wasn’t the bonkers upper class morality of the time, which I was already aware of from my love of historical romances. My report was the first (and last) time I used the word ‘apotheosis’, though. And I got an A+ from my English teacher, who was almost embarrassingly lavish in his praise of my work. Thank goodness we didn’t have that online plagiarism checking program in those days, is all I can say.

In any event, I had the idea this week of looking at the perennial favourite “If” by Rudyard Kipling with modern eyes, to see if his paean to Victorian stoicism was an example of toxic masculinity. The poem was published in 1895, and regularly tops any poll of favourite poems amongst British people.

Actually, I don’t hate it as much as I thought I would, for a poem written when the British Empire was at it’s peak. Sexism, racism, and classism were rampant, and even well off white men didn’t get off lightly – the ‘stiff upper lip’ was the greatest of masculine virtues. Obviously, women, the poor weak frail things, didn’t need to have any of these qualities. But I’m thinking also about the unseen multitudes implied in the poem – the doubters, the liars, the haters, those that look good or speak too wisely, the knaves, the fools, the losers, the dreamers, the thinkers, the impatient, those that show their feelings – are they not men too? Is that not in fact all of us, at one time or another?

For all of that, I can forgive anyone who can write this magnificent line:

“If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run”

……..