Edgar Albert Guest Poems

You don't begrudge the labor when the roses start to bloom;
You don't recall the dreary days that won you their perfume;
You don't recall a single care
...

Pa's not so very big or brave; he can't lift weights like Uncle Jim;
His hands are soft like little girls'; most anyone could wallop him.
Ma weighs a whole lot more than Pa. When they go swimming, she could stay
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When I was young and frivolous and never stopped to think,
When I was always doing wrong, or just upon the brink;
When I was just a lad of seven and eight and nine and ten,
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You do not know it, little man,
In your summer coat of tan
And your legs bereft of hose
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Oh, we have friends in England, and we have friends in France,
And should we have to travel there through some strange circumstance,
Undaunted we should sail away, and gladly should we go,
Because awaiting us would be somebody that we know.
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You have given me riches and ease,
You have given me joys through the years,
I have sat in the shade of your trees,
With the song of your birds in my ears.
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The doctor leads a busy life, he wages war with death;
Long hours he spends to help the one who's fighting hard for breath;
He cannot call his time his own, nor share in others' fun,
His duties claim him through the night when others' work is done.
...

We understand a lot of things we never did before,
And it seems that to each other Ma and I are meaning more.
I don't know how to say it, but since little Jessie died
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It's good to have the trees again, the singing of the breeze again,
It's good to see the lilacs bloom as lovely as of old.
It's good that we can feel again the touch of beauties real again,
For hearts and minds, of sorrow now, have all that they can hold.
...

The dead friends live and always will;
Their presence hovers round us still.
It seems to me they come to share
...