What One Approves, Another Scorns -- Arthur Guiterman

(Poem #1140) What One Approves, Another Scorns What one approves, another scorns, and thus his nature each discloses. You find the rosebush full of thorns, I find the thornbush full of roses. -- Arthur Guiterman

The combination of a good epigram and good verse is one I can seldom resist,
and while today's poem is hardly earthshattering in its originality, the
delightful way in which it is worded more than makes up for it. It doesn't
really have a 'punchline' in the way "On the Vanity of Earthly Greatness"
([Poem #24], and yes, Guiterman was way overdue to show up again <g>) does -
but it doesn't suffer for the lack. I'm reminded of bits of Piet Hein, and, to
a lesser extent, Stephen Crane. This definitely goes on my list of poems that
are both memorable and quotable.

martin

Links:
  Thanks to H. Paul Lillebo, whose wonderful poetry site provided not just
  today's poem, but a long-sought online biography of Guiterman:
    http://www.newtrix.com/poems/poetbio_e-l.htm#Guiterman

  Someday, this shall be a complete collection of epigrams on Minstrels :)
    [broken link] http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/collections/35.html

martin

On the Vanity of Earthly Greatness -- Arthur Guiterman

Following on from Ozymandias...

(Poem #24) On the Vanity of Earthly Greatness The tusks which clashed in mighty brawls Of mastodons, are billiard balls. The sword of Charlemagne the Just Is Ferric Oxide, known as rust. The grizzly bear, whose potent hug, Was feared by all, is now a rug. Great Caesar's bust is on the shelf, And I don't feel so well myself. -- Arthur Guiterman

A refreshingly humorous spin on the subject - the punchline drops into place
neatly. Guiterman has written a number of vaguely Nashish poems, of which
this is probably the most famous - personally, the only other things I'd
heard of his were the following fragment:

  Of all cold words of tongue or pen
  The worst are these: "I knew him when--"
        -Arthur Guiterman, 'Prophets in Their Own Country'

and, From Richard Lederer's 'Adventures of a Verbivore' (good book, btw):

  "It's not true that no words rhyme with orange . . . However, there was a
  man -- I'm not kidding -- named Henry Honeychurch Gorringe.  He was a naval
  commander who in the midnineteenth century oversaw the transport of
  Cleopatra's Needle to New York's Central Park.  Pouncing on this event, the
  poet Arthur Guiterman wrote:

        In Sparkhill buried lies a man of a mark
        Who brought the Obelisk to Central Park,
        Redoubtable Commander H. H. Gorringe,
        Whose name supplies the long-sought rhyme for orange.

  So orange is rhymable."

He does not appear to have led the world's most interesting life either -
some dedicated websearching turned up the  following, which for lack of a
better name I'll call a

Biographical Note:

  Guiterman, Arthur, American poet, 1871-1943.

Martin