Let The Wood Sawyer Let Me Rock You
A poem by Rudyard Kipling
Art: The Wood Sawyer by Charles E. Weir
Music: Good Vibes by Arya Cox
About the Poem
Rudyard Kipling’s “If—” offers a father’s stoic blueprint for becoming a resilient, honorable adult. The dramatic situation is a direct address, a series of conditional challenges that build an ideal of quiet strength. The mood is earnest, measured, and profoundly encouraging, as if a mentor is speaking calmly through life’s storms. The stakes are nothing less than the reader’s character and self-mastery. Kipling urges the listener to keep their head when others lose theirs, to trust themselves despite doubt, and to treat both triumph and disaster as fleeting imposters. He emphasizes perseverance through waiting, slander, and even the shattering of one’s life’s work, demanding the will to rebuild with worn-out tools. The poem culminates in a promise: if you can fill every unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, the earth and everything in it will be yours.
About the Music
Good Vibes by musician Arya Cox is an upbeat synth pop track that radiates pure positivity and energy. With a brisk tempo and shimmering electronic instrumentation, the piece layers crisp synthesizer melodies over a driving pop beat, evoking the carefree spirit of classic holiday celebrations and high-fashion runways. The mood is joyful and uplifting, reminiscent of the polished, feel-good production style of artists like Daft Punk or early 2000s pop hits. This instrumental composition conjures scenes of sunny days, stylish gatherings, and spontaneous good times, making it ideal for lifestyle content, commercial advertising, or any project seeking a burst of optimistic energy. Cox’s arrangement balances catchy hooks with a warm, inviting texture, ensuring the track feels both modern and timeless.
About the Art
Charles E. Weir’s oil painting The Wood Sawyer captures a moment of urban labor in a rapidly industrializing New York, depicting a well-dressed man cutting wood beside a stone sidewalk. A chained cast-iron scuttle cap stands open, ready to receive fuel sent down into a hotel cellar, identified by a hanging sign. The sawyer’s elegant attire suggests he may also serve as a porter, blurring class lines. In the middle distance, rooting hogs scavenge—a stark reminder of sanitation struggles in working-class neighborhoods, where the animals also provided food. The composition balances the foreground figure’s focused action against the grimy, bustling street, rendered in muted earth tones with touches of brown and gray. The mood is one of quiet determination amid squalor, evoking the social realism and attention to everyday life found in works by artists like John Sloan or Thomas Anshutz.
Full Poem
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 imposters 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 on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe 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!"
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