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General Two Poems By Edgar Guest
2010.01.20 13:32
You may know just as much as the other man knows, You may go just as far as the other man goes, You maybe just as strong, just as clever, as true, Yet somehow or other he wins over you. And you cannot see why this difference shoud be, when you know in your heart you're as able as he. The difference is not in the things which you know, It is not in the skill or the force of your blow, It is not in the work you are able to do, It's in the personality labeled as "you." The thing you don't see is the manner which he always at his best makes the effort to be. He is keen and alert, with a light in his eye, and a smile and a word for all men who pass by, He wins their affection and values it, too; He makes his life stand out, and just so could you. But you scowl and you sigh and when stangers are nigh, there's no warmth in your grip and no light in your eye. It is not what you know which will carry you far, It's not what you can do, but it is what you are. Improve your mind? Yes, with books on the shelf, But give time and thought to improving yourself. Make the effort and plan to be that sort of man that the world loves to honor whenever it can. PEACE Some have found it in a garden, some have found it on a stream, for the peace of true contentment is the depth of every dream; some have found it on the hill tops, and the search is ages old, But no man has ever found it in a selfish strife for gold. Oh, 'tis plain what men are after as they scramble with the throng, 'Tis the hope of every toiler through the weary days and long, 'Tis the hope of every sailor standing duty far at sea: The peace which follows labor in the days that are to be. There are countless ways to win it; some have found it in a child, some have come to it through sorrow, when their hearts were reconciled; But whichever way you wander and whichever choice you make You must leave a touch of beauty for the happiness you take. .... from "Collected Verse Of Edgar A. Guest" |
Comment 3
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이한중*65
2010.01.20 13:35
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이한중*65
2010.01.20 13:35
Edgar A. Guest(August 20, 1881 - August 5, 1959) is one of my favorite poets,
whose poems are easy to read and understand.
He is one of the best known poets out of Detroit
although he was born in England and immigrated to Detroit when he was young.
He was one of Detroit Golf Club members, which our club is proud of.
He wrote a number of poems about golf and our golf club as well.
Here is one of them in the below,Golfers
A golfer is a man who thinks
Exquisite is the putt which sinks,
And goes home with heart elate
when drives of his were far and straight.A golfer is a mortal mad
A mashie shot makes sad or glad,
Who counts that day well-spent when he
Scores the four one-shot holes in three.Lions and dogs and cats reveal
Contentment when they've had a meal;
But golfers, to be happy men,
Must make a "birdie" now and then.Dinner and dress and fame are not
enough to grace a golfer's lot.
Granted all these, he'll dismal look
If he should either slice or hook.Golfers are people who will bear
Life's ordinary round of care
Without complaint, and whimper sadly
Because they play a game so badly.#Ref. A mashie shot: a lofted iron shot (out of rough) or 5 iron shot
Four one-shot holes: Par 4 holes -
황규정*65
2010.01.21 01:15
Thanks for the introduction of Edgar Guest to us and he and his poems
remind me another Michigander,Ernie Harwell(1918~).Ernie was born in Georgia, but he had been 'the voice of Detroit Tigers'
for 42 years before he retired and Baseball Hall of Famer as well.His voice during the ballgame had been pleasing the fellow Michiganians,
but his personality and work ethics impressed the most and his numerous
quotes not only enjoyable ,but also encouraged them as well.Ernie Harwell is also author of many books and music composer. He has been
fighting against cancer since early last year and we all hope for the best for him.He and Edgar Guest would be in Michiganian's heart forever ! God bless them! KJ
In 1895, the year before Henry Ford took his first ride in a motor carriage, Eddie Guest signed on with the Free Press as a 13-year-old office boy. He stayed for 60 years.
In those six decades, Detroit underwent half a dozen identity changes, but Eddie Guest became a steadfast character on the changing scene.
Three years after he joined the Free Press, Guest became a cub reporter. He quickly worked his way through the labor beat -- a much less consequential beat than it is today -- the waterfront beat and the police beat, where he worked "the dog watch" -- 3 p.m. to 3 a.m.
By the end of that year -- the year he should have been completing high school -- Guest had a reputation as a scrappy reporter in a competitive town.
It did not occur to Guest to write in verse until late in 1898 when he was working as assistant exchange editor. It was his job to cull timeless items from the newspapers with which the Free Press exchanged papers for use as fillers. Many of the items were verses. Guest figured he might just as well write verse as clip it and submitted one of his own, a dialect verse, to Sunday editor Arthur Mosley. The Free Press was choosy about publishing the literary efforts of staff members and Guest, a 17-year-old dropout, might have been seen as something of an upstart. But Mosley decided to publish the verse, His verse ran on Dec. 11, 1898.
More contributions of verse and observations led to a weekly column, "Blue Monday Chat," and then a daily column, "Breakfast Table Chat."
Verse had always been part of Guest's writing, but he had more or less followed the workaday road of many newsmen for 10 years. In 1908, standing in the rain as the solitary mourner for one such journalist who had long since been forgotten and relegated to the newspaper's morgue, Guest resolved to escape that fate by becoming a specialist. From that day forward, nearly all of his writing was in meter and rhyme.
And readers loved it.
They asked where they could find collections of his folksy verses. Guest talked it over his younger brother Harry, a typesetter, and they bought a case of type. They were in the book publishing business.
After supper, Harry climbed the stairs to the attic to set Eddie's poetry. Harry could set as many as eight pages -- provided the verses didn't have too many "e's" in them -- before he had to print what he had and break up the forms for eight more pages. They printed 800 copies of a 136-page book, "Home Rhymes."
Two years later, in 1911 and still working in eight-page morsels, they printed "Just Glad Things," but upped the press order to 1,500 copies.
They escaped the limits of their type case with the third book, published in 1914, but Guest had some misgivings about the large press run -- 3,500 copies. It sold out in two Christmases.
More books followed, and before he was done Guest had filled more than 20. Sales ran into the millions and his most popular collection, "It Takes a Heap o' Livin'," sold more than a million copies by itself.
Guest's verses, originally clipped by exchange editors at other papers, went into syndication and he was carried by more than 300 newspapers. His popularity led to one of early radios longest-running radio shows, appearances on television, in Hollywood and in banquet halls and meeting rooms from coast to coast.
But Edgar A. Guest remained, at heart and in fact, a newspaper man. In 1939, he told "Editor & Publisher," "I've never been late with my copy and I've never missed an edition. And that's seven days a week." For more than 30 years, there was not a day that the Free Press went to press without Guest's verse on its pages. He worked for the Free Press for more than six decades. Thousands of Detroiters were born, grew up and had children of their own before a Free Press ever arrived at their homes without Guest's gentle human touch.
Shunned by "those highbrow, longhair intellectual critics and writers," Guest followed a clear and simple formula to journalistic success: "I take simple everyday things that happen to me and I figure it happens to a lot of other people and I make simple rhymes out of them."