From: Gideon Hallett [Gideon_Hallett@3Com.com] 		
Subject: If... 		
Date: 05 February 1999 12:07 

If you can keep your cool when all about you 			
Are getting ired and flaming off at you 			
If you can trust your sense when posters doubt you 			
But have tolerance for their doubting too; 			
If you can post and not be bored of posting 			
Or, being dealt a clout, don't deal out more 			
Or, being roasted, don't give way to roasting 			
And yet don't look too pure, nor act the boor 			

If you can quote - and not make quotes your master 			
If you can joke - but not make jokes your chain 			
If you can talk on buckyballs and plaster 			
And let those two discourses tax your brain 			
If you can bear to see the thread you've woven 			
Branched by folks to take in power tools 			
Or see the point you thought that you'd proven 			
Fail - and yet not call your former cohorts fools 			

If you can make a list of all your postings 			
And look at it with the critic's gaze; 			
Junk it, and start again with no boastings 			
And never say how bright your former days. 			
If you can force your brain and wit and heart 			
To carry on, despite the dross and fluff 			
To post with care even as you wield the LART 			
And be polite, despite the message tough. 			

If you can talk with folk and keep good repute 			
Or have your word writ up as common sense 			
Nor newbie hordes nor clueless rants dispute 			
Your clue, nor make the old farts take offence 			
If you can make brief lines full to the limit 			
A joy to read, despite the topic wild 			
Yours is Usenet and everything that's in it 			
And - which is more - you'll be a Clue, my child! 			


(Usual aplogies to Rudyard, etc. And I *know* woven doesn't
rhyme with proven, so ner.) 		

Gideon. 

(by the way, if a filk is a rip-off of a (folk) song, what's a
rip-off of a poem?)