After Bible Verse, Hariri Posts Poem about 'Lies'

by Naharnet Newsdesk 12 January 2021, 17:15

Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri on Tuesday posted a poem containing verses about “lies” and “blame,” a day after he tweeted a bible verse on “cheating” amid a row with President Michel Aoun and the Free Patriotic Movement.

Hariri’s tweet on Monday came after Aoun was caught on camera saying the PM-designate had “lied” about being given a cabinet line-up “paper” by the president.

The FPM later used a Quran verse to hit back at Hariri and al-Jadeed TV, whose camera had caught Aoun's remarks.

On Tuesday, Hariri posted a YouTube video of the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling -- an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist who died in 1936.

The video was posted on the Vero social media platform, which is owned by Hariri's billionaire Saudi-based brother Ayman.

Below is the full text of the 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 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 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!’

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!”

Source: Naharnet

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