Edgar Albert Guest Family Poems

I freely confess there are good friends of mine,
With whom we are often invited to dine,
Who get on my nerves so that I cannot eat
Or stay with my usual ease in my seat;
...

I SING the family party that once we used to know,
The old time family parties we gave so long ago,
When every near-relation and distant cousins, too,
...

With time our notions allus change,
An' years make old idees seem strange-
Take Mary there- time was when she
Thought one child made a family,
...

It makes me smile to hear 'em tell each other nowadays
The burdens they are bearing, with a child or two to raise.
Of course the cost of living has gone soaring to the sky
...

I've tried the high-toned specialists, who doctor folks to-day;
I've heard the throat man whisper low 'Come on now let us spray';
I've sat in fancy offices and waited long my turn,
...

There never was a family without its homely man,
With legs a little longer than the ordinary plan,
An' a shock of hair that brush an' comb can't ever straighten out,
An' hands that somehow never seem to know what they're about;
...