At the same time, it does emphasize the speaker's addressee.

One last little thing: Did you notice that the first two lines end with the same word ('you')? Technically this is a rhyme, but we think it's just a little cheap, using the same word and all.(If you want to know more about this violent little episode, head over to ' In a Nutshell' or ' Best of the Web.') Now, without going too much into the whole Second Boer War thing, which inspired Kipling to write the poem, we can safely assume that these lines have something to do with all the craziness down in South Africa at the time.To 'keep it' (to prevent it from falling off) is to be rational, in control, etc. Think of it like this: We often think of the head as the source of reason, wisdom, rationality, and the like.And just as to 'keep one's head' meant just about the same thing, so did 'lose one's head': to go crazy, lose one's mind, act strangely, and so on.What we do know for sure, though, is that 'to keep one's head' meant just about the same thing in the 1890s (when our friend Kipling wrote 'If') as it does now: to be cool, calm, and collected.Okay, so maybe it's not nothing, but the lines don't give us a 'then' yet, so we really can't say for sure at this point.The speaker is addressing somebody, and tells him (we're just assuming that our speaker's addressing a 'he' at this point) that if he can keep his head when everybody else around him is losing theirs and blaming him then….Well, we've got a poem called 'If' and, whaddya know, 'if' is the first word of the poem.If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you

If by Rudyard Kipling