Introduction
Berton Braley writes as though he has caught a reader at the exact moment when excuses begin to sound convincing. He answers them with a starting line, a workshop, a fresh page, or a plain instruction to praise someone before it is too late. His strongest poems are practical without being cold: ambition matters, but so do fairness, friendship, courage and useful work.
The eight Berton Braley poems below cover the titles readers most often seek, including The Will to Win, Start Where You Stand, Opportunity, Do It Now, The Thinker and That’s Success. Each selection is followed by an original, plain-language explanation of its meaning, themes and technique. The page also clears up a common title confusion between Braley’s poem originally printed as “Success” and the separate poem now widely circulated as “That’s Success.”
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Motivation, Work & Character
Famous Berton Braley Poems
Featured PoemsThe 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!
Overview Short Summary
“The Will to Win” describes the concentration and endurance required to pursue a demanding goal. The speaker builds a long series of conditions—work, sacrifice, planning, courage and persistence—before arriving at the compact final promise: determined effort can make achievement possible.
Interpretation Meaning and Central Idea
The poem is not simply telling readers to wish more strongly. Desire must become disciplined action. Braley links ambition with time, labor, planning and the willingness to continue through discomfort. Its message is deliberately extreme, so it works best as a portrait of total commitment rather than a balanced guide to everyday life.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Determination: A serious goal demands sustained effort.
- Sacrifice: Achievement may require comfort and distractions to be set aside.
- Resilience: Poverty, illness and fear are presented as obstacles to withstand.
- Focused ambition: Thought, planning and energy must point in the same direction.
Poetic Craft Repetition, Structure and Tone
The repeated word “If” delays the conclusion and makes the poem feel like a test of commitment. Short lines quicken the pace, while lists of actions pile pressure on the reader. The long conditional sentence finally releases into the two-word ending, giving the close its forceful, memorable effect.
Title History Why Is It Also Called Success?
The 1916 book Things as They Are prints this poem under the title “Success.” Modern collections frequently use “The Will to Win,” taken from its central idea. It should not be confused with Braley’s separate poem ending with the words “that’s success,” which appears later on this page.
Start Where You Stand
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
Why, that’s enough, you’re done with it, you’re through;
This is another chapter in the book,
This is another race that you have planned,
Don’t give the vanished days a backward look,
Start where you stand.
The world won’t care about your old defeats
If you can start anew and win success,
The future is your time, and time is fleet
And there is much of work and strain and stress;
Forget the buried woes and dead despairs,
Here is a brand-new trial right at hand,
The future is for him who does and dares,
Start where you stand.
Old failures will not halt, old triumphs aid,
To-day’s the thing, to-morrow soon will be;
Get in the fight and face it unafraid,
And leave the past to ancient history;
What has been, has been; yesterday is dead
And by it you are neither blessed nor banned,
Take courage, man, be brave and drive ahead,
Start where you stand.
Overview Short Summary
“Start Where You Stand” tells the reader to begin again from the present rather than waiting for a perfect moment. Past failure cannot prevent new action, while past success cannot complete today’s work. The recurring instruction turns the poem into a practical argument for starting now.
Interpretation Meaning and Main Lesson
Braley does not ask the reader to pretend that the past never happened. He asks that it stop controlling the next decision. Each day is described as a new chapter, race and trial. Progress begins when memory becomes background knowledge instead of an excuse for delay.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- New beginnings: Renewal starts from present circumstances.
- Courage: Action must continue despite previous defeat.
- Time: The future approaches quickly, so delay has a cost.
- Personal responsibility: The reader is asked to act rather than wait for conditions to change.
Poetic Craft Refrain, Metaphors and Form
Each eight-line stanza ends with “Start where you stand,” creating a refrain that is both instruction and conclusion. The book, race and fight metaphors present life as something still being written, run and contested. Regular rhyme and direct commands make the poem easy to remember and recite.
Opportunity
With doubt and dismay you are smitten,
You think there’s no chance for you, son?
Why, the best books haven’t been written,
The best race hasn’t been run,
The best score hasn’t been made yet,
The best song hasn’t been sung,
The best tune hasn’t been played yet,
Cheer up, for the world is young!
No chance? Why, the world is just eager
For things that you ought to create;
Its store of true wealth is still meagre,
Its needs are incessant and great;
It yearns for more power and beauty,
More laughter and love and romance,
More loyalty, labor and duty—
No chance? Why, there’s nothing but chance!
For the best verse hasn’t been rhymed yet,
The best house hasn’t been planned,
The highest peak hasn’t been climbed yet,
The mightiest rivers aren’t spanned;
Don’t worry and fret, faint-hearted,
The chances have just begun,
For the best jobs haven’t been started,
The best work hasn’t been done.
Overview Short Summary
“Opportunity” answers a discouraged person who believes every worthwhile achievement has already been claimed. The speaker lists books, songs, buildings, journeys and jobs that still remain to be created or completed. The world is presented not as finished, but as waiting for contribution.
Interpretation Meaning and Central Idea
The poem challenges the belief that opportunity belongs only to earlier generations or unusually gifted people. Its argument is that human needs are still unfinished: beauty, work, loyalty, invention and service remain necessary. Opportunity exists because the world remains incomplete.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Possibility: Valuable work remains available to future creators.
- Creativity: Books, songs and buildings symbolize new human contributions.
- Service: Opportunity is connected with meeting real needs, not merely gaining fame.
- Optimism: The future is treated as open rather than exhausted.
Poetic Craft Questions, Repetition and Structure
Rhetorical questions allow the speaker to argue directly with discouragement. Repetition of “best” and “hasn’t” emphasizes unfinished possibility. Three eight-line stanzas broaden the examples from art and sport to social need, exploration and work.
Do It Now
If with pleasure you are viewing
Any work a man is doing,
If you like him or you love him,
Tell him now;
Don’t withhold your approbation
Till the parson makes oration
And he lies with snowy lilies on his brow;
No matter how you shout it
He won’t really care about it;
He won’t know how many teardrops you have shed;
If you think some praise is due him,
Now’s the time to slip it to him,
For he cannot read his tombstone when he’s dead.
More than fame and more than money
Is the comment kind and sunny
And the hearty, warm approval of a friend.
For it gives to life a savor,
And it makes you stronger, braver,
And it gives you heart and spirit to the end;
If he earns your praise—bestow it,
If you like him, let him know it,
Let the words of true encouragement be said;
Do not wait till life is over
And he’s underneath the clover,
For he cannot read his tombstone when he’s dead.
Overview Short Summary
“Do It Now” urges readers to express praise and affection while another person can still hear them. Funeral speeches, flowers and tears arrive too late to encourage the dead. A kind word spoken during life has immediate and practical value.
Interpretation Meaning and Moral Lesson
The poem treats appreciation as something that should be used, not stored. Braley contrasts private approval with spoken encouragement and argues that silence can become regret. His advice applies to friendship, family and work: recognize worthy effort at the time it is being made.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Timely appreciation: Praise matters most when its recipient can receive it.
- Friendship: Warm approval gives another person strength.
- Mortality: Death turns delayed words into permanent missed opportunities.
- Encouragement: Honest recognition may be worth more than money or fame.
Poetic Craft Contrast, Refrain and Tone
The tombstone refrain gives the poem its memorable warning. Snowy lilies, funeral speech and clover are contrasted with living conversation. The tone is conversational and urgent, using direct instructions rather than abstract reflection.
The Thinker
Back of the beating hammer
By which the steel is wrought,
Back of the workshop’s clamor
The seeker may find the Thought;
The Thought that is ever master
Of iron and steam and steel,
That rises above disaster
And tramples it under heel!
The drudge may fret and tinker
Or labor with dusty blows,
But back of him stands the Thinker,
The clear-eyed man who knows;
For into each plow or saber,
Each piece and part and whole,
Must go the Brains of Labor,
Which gives the work a soul!
Back of the motors humming,
Back of the belts that sing,
Back of the hammers drumming,
Back of the cranes that swing,
There is the eye which scans them,
Watching through stress and strain;
There is the Mind which plans them—
Back of the brawn, the Brain!
Might of the roaring boiler,
Force of the engine’s thrust,
Strength of the sweating toiler—
Greatly in these we trust;
But back of them stands the Schemer,
The Thinker who drives things through;
Back of the job—the Dreamer
Who’s making the dream come true!
Overview Short Summary
“The Thinker” looks behind the noise and strength of industrial work to the thought that organizes it. Hammers, motors, boilers and physical labor matter, but designs, ideas and planning give machinery and effort a useful direction.
Interpretation Meaning and Central Argument
The poem does not dismiss manual labor. Instead, it argues that labor and thought reach their highest value together. Braley’s “Thinker” is not merely a distant intellectual; he is the planner and dreamer whose idea becomes practical through the worker, machine and workshop.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Ideas and invention: Thought stands behind manufactured objects.
- Labor: Physical work gives ideas a material form.
- Planning: Complex achievements depend on a mind that sees the whole.
- Dreams made practical: Imagination becomes valuable when carried into action.
Poetic Craft Sound, Personification and Repetition
Words such as “beating,” “clamor,” “humming” and “drumming” reproduce the workshop’s sound. Belts sing, hammers drum and the brain appears behind the brawn. Repeated “Back of” phrases keep directing attention from visible machinery toward the less visible act of thought.
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