If

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!

-Rudyard Kipling

So I have always wondered why RK uses the word “unforgiving” in here. Why does he call it the ‘unforgiving’ minute? I am not a literature major, neither am I well versed in the world of prose and poetry, but I’ve had my fair share of works like the divine comedy and shakespeare (of course we all know dante’s work as portrayed in the movie ‘Seven’).

But why does RK call it the “unforgiving” minute? I guess I could also talk about Milan Kundera’s book ‘The unbearable lightness of being’ and why he uses the word ‘unbearable’ in the same sentence with the word ‘light’ – but he does actually explain it within the story he builds. On the other hand in Rudyard Kipling’s poem the word “unforgiving” stems from nowhere – again I do not how poetry should flow but, to me, it seems out of place.

Yeah. Ok.