I much enjoyed the recent HTBS posting linking to a video of Kipling’s “If” poem illustrated by rowing pictures on Bryan Kitch’s entertaining and well informed blog, Rowing Related. The posting noted that:
'“If” was written in 1895 and is still very popular, not the least as a parody, which confirms its status amongst the British people.’There is a rowing version of “If” which I prefer to call a ‘homage’ rather than a ‘parody’ as the former implies respect while the latter could imply mockery. It was written in 1931 by Dermond* St John Gogarty ‘with apologies to Rudyard Kipling’. It is quoted in Chris Dodd’s anthology of rowing writing and poetry, Boating (Oxford University Press, 1983):
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To drive your legs long after they are done
And so row on when there is nothing in you
Except the will that says ‘Now on’;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With forty strokes, and let the boat full run,
Yours is the earth and everything that’s in it.
And what’s more you’ll be an oar my son.
Does anyone know who Dermond* St John Gogarty was and if he wrote any other rowing poetry?
* See comment 1.
