Education

By: Edgar A. Guest


I think that I would rather teach a child
The joys of kindness than long hours to spend
Poring o’er multiple and dividend;
How differing natures may be reconciled
Rather than just how cost accounts are filed;
How to live bravely to its end
Rather than how one fortress to defend,
Or how gold coins once gathered can be piled.

There is an education of the mind
Which all require and parents early start,
But there is training of a nobler kind
And that’s the education of the heart.
Lessons that are most difficult to give
Are faith and courage and the way to live.

Collected Verse of Edgar A. Guest
(Cutchogue, NY: Buccaneer Books, 1976) 545

Creed

By: Edgar A. Guest




I would live this life so well
Strangers of me praise might tell.
Somehow I would like to be
Cherished here in memory,
Not as one whose skill was great;
Not as one who conquered fate;
Not as one who rose to fame,
Leaving a remembered name,
But as one who served some need
With a timely, kindly deed.

I would have my life be told
Not in glory or in gold,
Or in books which students read,
Giving name and date and deed
Of a dead man labeled great.
Let mine be the lesser fate.
Let me be to print unknown;
O’er my grave no towering stone.
‘Tis sufficient at the end
To be mourned for as a friend.

Say of me I loved this earth,
Suffered sorrow, relished mirth;
Bravely tried to live and found
Friendships half the world around;
Say I did my best to share
Burdens others had to bear;
Seldom stayed to count the cost
Lest the chance to help be lost.
If of me this can be said,
Sweet my sleep when I am dead.


Collected Verse of Edgar A. Guest
(Cutchogue, NY: Buccaneer Books, 1976), 549