(With kind apologies to Rudyard Kipling)
By Prof K Rajasuriya
If you can bear in mind that you are dealing,
With human life & not with cases; pray
If you can treat them without discrimination
Whether they’re labelled pauper or to pay;
If you can rush with equal alacrity,
To see a case that needs attention state,
If it’s no matter there’s no ‘buckshee’ in it
Yet, if offered you can refuse if flat
If you can by a smile cheer up the ailing
Or by a touch relieve a sufferer’s pain
If you can by a word console the dying
Who’ll never taste this Earth’s tortures again
If you can force you heart & nerve & sinew
To work overtime for those who need you still
If all that counts is just the joy of serving
If matters not what happens to the bill.
If you can wait & not be tired by waiting,
For the fame that one-day perhaps you’ll earn,
Cheap notoriety the while disdaining;
Nor rush to print; cause there’s much more to learn.
If you can leave the trick of administering
To those who’ve made it a crooked art
Knowing it’s but a quack’s one accomplishment
Of honest men it never forms a part.
If you can talk touts and keep your virtue
Or treat big bugs, nor the poor lose touch
If neither wealth nor fame can yet corrupt you
If all beings count with you, but non too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds of work well done,
You’ll then have reached a noble professionals summit
And which is more you’ll die content, my son.
