If you want a thing bad enough
To go out and fight for it,
Work day and night for it,
...
Start where you stand and never mind the past,
The past won't help you in beginning new,
If you have left it all behind at last
...
With doubt and dismay you are smitten
You think there's no chance for you, son?
Why, the best books haven't been written
...
If you want a thing bad enough
To go out and fight for it,
Work day and night for it,
...
TWENTY years of the army, of drawing a sergeant's pay
And helping the West Point shavetails, fresh from the training school
To handle a bunch of soldiers and drill 'em the proper way
...
Berton Braley (29 January 1882 – 23 January 1966) was an American poet. Braley was born in Madison, Wisconsin. His father, Arthur B. Braley, was a judge; he died when Berton Braley was seven years old. At 16, Braley quit high school and got a job working as a factory hand at a plow plant. After a few years, Braley went back to school and received his high school diploma. Shortly thereafter he discovered Tom Hood's poetry instructional book The Rhymester. Braley was first published at the age of 11 when a small publication printed a fairy tale he wrote. He was a prolific writer, with verses in many magazines, including Coal Age, American Machinist, Nation's Business, Forbes magazine, Harper's Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, and the Saturday Evening Post. His work appeared in numerous pulp magazines, including Adventure, Breezy Stories, Complete Stories, The Popular Magazine, Short Stories and Snappy Stories. He published twenty books, about half of them being poetry collections. In 1917, John Philip Sousa composed a marching song for the University of Wisconsin, titled Wisconsin Forward Forever with lyrics by Berton Braley. In 1934, Braley published the autobiographical Pegasus Pulls a Hack: Memoirs of a Modern Minstrel.)
The Will To Win
If you want a thing bad enough
To go out and fight for it,
Work day and night for it,
Give up your time and your peace and
your sleep for it
If only desire of it
Makes you quite mad enough
Never to tire of it,
Makes you hold all other things tawdry
and cheap for it
If life seems all empty and useless without it
And all that you scheme and you dream is about it,
If gladly you'll sweat for it,
Fret for it, Plan for it,
Lose all your terror of God or man for it,
If you'll simply go after that thing that you want.
With all your capacity,
Strength and sagacity,
Faith, hope and confidence, stern pertinacity,
If neither cold poverty, famished and gaunt,
Nor sickness nor pain
Of body or brain
Can turn you away from the thing that you want,
If dogged and grim you besiege and beset it,
You'll get it!
Another poem by Mr. Braley is An Unsung Hero about train dispatchers, appeared in Santa Fe Magazine, June 1913
Trying to find the poem of his that begins: When folks ask how are you, for heaven's sake don't tell ‘em