“If—” consists of four stanzas of eight lines or octaves. These stanzas form one long sentence (or conditional clause). The poem uses iambic pentameter, with five feet consisting of an unstressed and then a stressed syllable, to create a syntax that combines oratorical and conversational language.

A typical two-line unit in “If—” scans like this (stressed syllables in bold):

If you | can keep | your head | when all | about you  

   Are los | ing theirs | and blam | ing it | on you (Lines 1-2).

The stanzas’ rhyme scheme is ABABCDCD, except for the first stanza, which scans as AAAABCBC.

Kipling’s meter is in keeping with traditional English poetry and verse drama, which uses iambic pentameter, the most common meter in English poetry such as in the work of Edmund Spenser and Shakespeare.

Poets create masculine rhymes by utilizing stressed single syllables at the end of words. A feminine rhyme matches two or more syllables, with the last syllable being unstressed:

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, [feminine]

   Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, [masculine]

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, [feminine]

   And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise [masculine] (Lines 5-8).