Sally Grumbridge
artist painter printmaker
If
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 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 a 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!'
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!
Rudyard Kipling
This poem, written in full in my father's journal, is incorporated as text into two of the paintings: If and The Bridge as well as the intaglio print Hellfire Pass
No, not the poppy
No, not the poppy in this remembrance
But the pale orchid
Hidden by clumps of thick bamboo
Shadowed by black banana leaves
Stencilled against a golden sky, a brilliant night
No, not the poppy in this remembrance
But the pale orchid
Alone and flowering
Above the scorpion
Crawling with all its deadly sting
Where the snake curves and spits out venom
No, not the poppy in this remembrance
But the pale orchid
Leaning towards the unknown graves
Long overgrown and lost forever
Hiding the bones whose flesh was once
Concerned with parishes through half of England
No, not the poppy
But the pale orchid
Blooms in the dark of this remembrance
​
Dennis Griffiths Far East Prisoner of War
This poem was the inspiration for the painting Not the Poppy