Everyone knows Rudyard Kipling's If, which remains popular despite the author's unfashionable and politically incorrect image these days. You don't have to subscribe to Kipling's politics to take on board his poetic advice to "keep your head while all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you".
Kipling's views and writings on Africa and The White Man's Burden are well known but hardly anyone remembers nowadays that he took a keen interest in "The Ulster Question" and even helped fund the shipment of arms through Larne at the time of the uprising by the Protestant and unionist people against Home Rule.
Kipling's powerful poem Ulster 1912 was published in the Morning Post newspaper on the eve of the introduction of the third Home Rule bill that year. Cut out from the newspaper and kept, a copy of the poem is now framed and hanging on the wall at the Enniskillen office of DUP Westminster candidate Arlene Foster.
If you are looking for an encapsulation of the feelings of unionists at that time, particularly their distrust of London, Kipling's lines are hard to beat:
The dark eleventh hour
Draws on and sees us sold
To every evil power
We fought against of old.
Rebellion, rapine, hate,
Oppression, wrong and greed
Are loosed to rule our fate,
By England's act and deed.
Nearly 100 years later, similar fears for the future and distrust of the British government still reside in the hearts of unionists. Republicans, having waged unrelenting war for a quarter of a century against the crown, are now regularly received as honoured guests at 10 Downing Street, the very building they attacked with mortars as recently as 1991.
Those of us who come out of the nationalist tradition need to understand unionist feelings if there is to be a peaceful and lasting resolution of the conflict. The unease among unionists at the perceived machinations of the British and Irish governments is accompanied by nagging doubt about the quality and negotiating skills of their own leadership.
It now looks as if this election is going to see a further weakening and perhaps even the final demise of the Trimble leadership of Ulster unionism.
The Trimble rapier having apparently failed, unionists are opting for the Paisley bludgeon. The widespread expectation is that the DUP will emerge with more Westminster seats, while the UUP's tally will be reduced from five to perhaps two or at most three. Most observers predict a parallel ascendancy of Sinn Féin on the nationalist side, leading to a highly polarised situation.
Arlene Foster's UUP rival, Tom Elliott, articulated unionist fears of how things could develop if the Northern Ireland Assembly remains suspended and Direct Rule from London continues.
"It will not be continued direct rule as we in the unionist community know it, it will be direct rule with very close association with the Irish Government and, if Sinn Féin continue their rise in the Republic, they could hold the balance of power following the next general election, so you could have actually a Sinn Féin minister for foreign affairs."
Elliott's timetable may seem a little melodramatic but Thursday's vote in Northern Ireland is obviously going to mark a turning-point. There will be an awful lot more green on the electoral map depicting Westminster constituencies and local councils when the results are announced.
It's not as if the unionists have gone away, you know, it's just that they aren't voting in the same numbers. Apathy is playing its part beneath the surface. Tom Elliott makes the point that there are more unionists than nationalists living in the greater Belfast area, yet unionists are a minority on the city council. "We could be left in a few years' time with a majority of unionists in Northern Ireland, but a majority of nationalists voting."
Elliott believes the comparative peace and stability of recent years has made unionists complacent. "Less than 50 per cent of the vote at the European election went to unionist candidates."
But despite these fears, there is no air of crisis in the North, largely due to the suspension of the IRA campaign and even the prospect that the organisation might disband altogether.
Therefore Kipling's war-cry is hopefully out of date and the generality of unionists are unlikely to be heard declaring, as he did:
If England drive us forth
We shall not fall alone.