​“If—for Daughters”

by Brian G. Daigle, modeled after Rudyard Kipling’s “If—”
 
If you can guard your heart when all about you
              Are compromising theirs, blaming woes on you,
If you can honor yourself when all dishonor you,
              But be merciful with their dishonoring too;
If you can labor and not grow resentful in laboring,
              Or being gossiped about, don’t trade in lies told,
Or being derided, derision not harboring,
              And yet don’t dress too haughty, nor speak too bold:
 
If you can feel—and not make feelings your master;
              If you can direct—and not make directing your worth;
If you can host life’s Lents and Easters
              And to each in their seasons labor unto birth;
If you can see yourself in any one mirror
              Warped by Folly to entrap damsels and muggins,
Or see the world you’ve built, shattered,
              And with the sun arise with blistered hands.
 
If you can paint one picture of all your toil
              And sell each drop at public auction,
And watch it leave priced far less valuable,
              And never sigh a huff at hearts so misshapen;
If you can coerce your tendon and joint and heart
              To wash the feet of every weary soul,
And so honor the lesser when nothing more can you impart,
              Except breath which livens them with “Behold!”
 
If when you wrangle with children and time, maintain your grace,
              Or frolic and feast with Princes and wine—nor lose Prudence’s guard.
If neither strangers nor family can derail your pace,
              If every woman knows your praise, but none be vanguard;
If in an hour you build more than break,
              And at every turn and juncture, rise more than you falter,
Home will be made everywhere you give more than you take,
              And—the Beauty therein—you will be a Woman, my daughter!