If you can dress to make yourself attractive,

Yet not make puffs and curls your chief delight, 

If you can swim and roll, be strong and active,

But of the gentler graces loose not sight.

If you can dance without a craze for dancing,

Play without giving play too strong a hold,

Enjoy the love of friends without romancing,

Care for the weak, the friendless and the old.

If you can master Irish, Greek and Latin,

And not acquire as well a priggish mien,

If you can feel the touch of silk and satin,

Without despising calico and gein.

If you can ply a saw and use a hammer,

Can do a man’s work when the need arise

Can sing when asked without excuse or stammer,

Can rise above unfriendly snubs and slurs.

If you can make good breads as well as fudges,

Can sew with skill and have an eye for dust.

If you can be a friend and bear no grudges

A girl whom all will love because they must.

If sometime you should meet and love another,

And make a hope and you, its soul

A loyal wife and mother.

A home with faith and peace enshrined,

You’ll work out pretty nearly to my mind,

The plan that’s being developed through the ages,

And win the best that life can have in store.

You’ll be my girl

A model for the ages

A woman whom the world will bow before.

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 impostors just the same;

If you can 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 innings,

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!"

If you can talk with crowds, and keep your virtue,

Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch.

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the earth and everything that’s in it

And – Which is more – You’ll be a man, my son!

Do not undermine your worth

By comparing yourself with others,

It is because we are different that each of us is special.

Do not set your goals

By what other people deem important

Only you know what is best for you.

Do not take for granted

The things closest to your hear.

Cling to them as you would your life,

For without them, life is meaningless.

Do not let your life slip through your fingers,

By living your life one day at a time

You live all the days of your life.

Do not give up when you still have something to give,

Nothing is really over

Until the moment you stop trying.

It is a fragile thread that binds us to each other

Do not be afraid to encounter risks.

It is by taking chances that we learn how to be brave.

Do not shut love out of your life

By saying it is impossible to find.

The quickest way to receive love is to give love;

The fastest way to lose love is to hold it too tightly.

In addition

The best way to keep love

Is to give it away.

Do not dismiss your dreams,

To be without dreams is to be without hope.

To be without hope is to be without purpose.

Do not run through life so fast that you forget

Not only where you have been, but also where you are going.

Life is nor a race,

But a journey to be savored

Each step of the way.

Ah! The memories that find me now

My hair is turning gray

Drifting in like painted butterflies,

From paddocks far away.

Dipping dainty wings in fancy

And the pictures fading fast.

Stand again in rose or purple

In the album of the past

There’s the old slab dwelling dreaming

By the wistful, watchful trees,

Where the coolabaks are listening

To the stories of the breeze.

There’s a homely welcome beaming

From it’s big bright friendly eyes

With the Sugarloaf behind it

Blackened in against the skies;

There’s the same dear happy circle

Round the borees cheery blaze.

With a little Irish Mother telling

Tales of other years.

She had one sweet, holy custom,

Which I never can forget

And a gentle benediction crowns

Her memory for it yet.

I can see that little mother

Still and hear her as she pleads.

"Now it’s getting on to bedtime,

all you children get your beads"

There were no steel-bound conventions in that old slab dwelling free;

Only this – each night she lined us up to say the Rosary.

E’en the stranger there, who stayed the night

Upon his journey knew

He must join the little circle, ay, and take his decade too.

I believe she darkly plotted, when a sinner hove in sight,

Who was known to say no prayer at all,

To make him stay the night.

Then we’d softly gather round her, and we’d

Speak in accents low,

And pray like Sainted Dominic so many years ago;

And the little Irish Mothers face was radiant

For she knew

That "where tow or three are gathered"

He is gathered with them too.

O’er the paters and the aves how her

Reverent head would bend!

How she’d kiss the cross devoutly when

She counted to the end!

And the visitor would rise at once and brush his knees –

And then

He’d look very, very foolish as he took the boards again.

She had other prayers to keep him.

They were long, long prayers in truth

And we used to call them "Trimmings" in my disrespectful youth.

She would pray for kith and kin,

And all the friends she’d ever know

Yes, and everyone of us could boast a "trimmin" all his own.

She would pray for all our little needs, and every shade of care

That might darken oe’r The Sugarloaf, she would meet it with a prayer.

She would pray for this ones "sore complaint", or that one’s "hurted hand",

Or that someone else might make a deal and get "that bit of land£.

Or that dad might sell the cattle well

And seasons good might rule

So that little John, the weakly one might go away to school.

There were "trimmins" too that came and went

But ne’er she’d closed without,

Adding one for something special "none of you must speak about"

Gentle was that little mother, and her wit would sparkle free

But she’d murder him who looked around, while at the Rosary.

And if perchance you lost your beads

Disaster waited you.

For the only one she’d pardon was "himself" because she knew.

He was hopeless and ‘twas sinful what excuse he’d invent.

So she let him have his fingers, and he cracked them as he went.

And bedad, he wasn’t certain if he counted five or ten,

Yet he’d face the crisis bravely

And would start around again.

But she tallied all the decades, and

She’d block him on the spot

With a "Glory Daddah, Glory" and he’d

Glory like a shot.

She would portion out the decades to the company at large.

But when she reached the "trimmins"

She put herself in charge.

And it oft was cause for wonder, how she never once forgot,

But could keep them in their order,

Till she went right through the lot.

For the little Irish mother’s prayers embraced the countrywide,

If a neighbor met with trouble or was taken ill or died.

We could count upon a "trimmin" till in fact it got that way,

That the Rosary was but "trimmins" to the "trimmins" we would say

Then himself would start complaining for the public good, we though,

"Sure you'll have us here till morning yerra cut them trimmins short"

But she’d take him very gently, till he softened by degrees,

"Well then let us get it over, come all hands to your knees"

So the little Irish Mother kept her trimmins to the last

Ever growing as the shadows o’er the old selection passed.

And she lit our drab existence with her simple faith and love,

And I know the angels lingered near to hear her prayers above,

For her children trod the path she trod, nor did they later spurn,

To impress her wholesome maxims or their children in their turn,

Ay and every sore complaint came right and every "hurted" hand,

And we made a deal from time to time and sold a bit of land.

And dad did sell the cattle well, and little John, her pride,

‘Twas he who said the Mass in Black the morning that she died.

So her gentle spirit triumphed for ‘twas this without a doubt

Was the very special "trimmin" that she kept so dark about.

But the yeas have crowded past us and fledglings all have flown,

And the nest beneath the Sugarloaf no longer is their own.

For a hand has written "Finis" and the book is closed for good.

There’s a stately red tiled mansion where the old slab dwelling stood.

There the stranger has the evening and the formal supper spread:

But I wonder has she "trimmins" now or is the Rosary said.

Ah! These little Irish Mothers are passing from us one by one,

Who will write the noble story of the good that they have done,

All their children may be scattered and their fortunes windward hurled.

But the "trimmins" of the Rosary will bless them round the world.

I thing that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast:

A tree that looks at God all day

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair.

Upon whose bosom snow has lain

Who intimately lives with rain

Poems are made by fools like me

But only God can make a tree.

You enter the courts with the will to win

For effort is yours and zest.

But victory is fickle and may not come

Though your play perhaps is best.

But it is not always the expert wins

Nor the skill behind your game.

But what matter the years you have

Topped the score,

On the crowds that shout your name.

There’s always the day when you’ll miss the

stroke.

Or you drop the ball too short.

And the novice across the net will win,

In the game of life and sport.

When the last Great Scorer comes

To write against your name,

He won’t ask if I won or lost

But how I played the game.