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.”
Furthermore, each of them has again and again finished on his nerve. Did not the words,—
“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!’”
run through Bondurant’s mind that last afternoon when he was following Moro outlaws through a foul mangrove swamp, while his senses reeled with the fever which was so soon to end his life?
In his wonderful quadruplet of stanzas Kipling has fixed one criterion of manhood which it is hard indeed to meet:—