Who is Edgar Albert Guest

Edgar Albert Guest (20 August 1881 – 5 August 1959) was a British-born American poet who became known as the People's Poet. His poems often had an inspirational and optimistic view of everyday life.

Early life

Guest was born in Birmingham, England in 1881. In 1891, his family moved from England to Detroit, Michigan, where Guest lived until he died.

Career

After he began at the Detroit Free Press as a copy boy and then a reporter, his first poem appeared on 11 December 1898. He became a naturalized citizen in 1902. For 40 years, Guest was widely read throughout North America, and his sentimental, optimistic poems were in the same vein as the light verse of Nick Kenny, who wrote syndicated columns during the same decades.

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Edgar Albert Guest Poems

• The Limitations Of Greatness
  NO MAN really knows enough
  To be hateful to his brother,
  None is rich enough to cuff
  And be cruel to another; ...
• Forgotten Boyhood
  He wears a long and solemn face
  And drives the children from his place;
  He doesn't like to hear them shout
  Or race and run and romp about, ...
• What We Can Be
  What We Can Be
  We cannot all be men of fame,
  We cannot all be men of wealth,
  We cannot all be known by name, ...
• The Summer Girl
  The Summer girl
  In peek-a-boos
  And open hose
  And narrow shoes, ...
• We Who Stay At Home
  When you were just our little boy, on many a night we crept
  Unto your cot and watched o'er you, and all the time you slept.
  We tucked the covers round your form and smoothed your pillow, too,
  And sometimes stooped and kissed your cheeks, but that you never knew. ...

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Edgar Albert Guest Quotes

• Columbus dreamed of an unknown shore at the rim of a far flung sky.
• The timid and fearful first failures dismay, but the stout heart stays trying by night and by day. He values his failures as lessons that teach The one way to get to the goal he would reach.

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Comments about Edgar Albert Guest

• Daniellharrisus: the proof of worth— edgar albert guest
• Aly14_: even hope may seem but futile, when with troubles you’re beset, but remember you are facing just what other men have met. you may fail, but fall still fighting; don’t give up, whate’er you do; eyes front, head high to the finish. see it through! -edgar albert guest
• Padrehomestead: a poem by edgar albert guest "don't quit"
• Jasonfried: it’s funny the things that light your fire. i remember reading this poem over and over when i was starting my first business back in my teens: “it couldn’t be adobe” by edgar albert guest —>
• Leopercer: it couldn’t be done by edgar albert guest somebody scoffed: “oh, you’ll never do that; at least no one ever has done it;” but he took off his coat and he took off his hat and the first thing we knew he’d begun it.

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