It’s always tough to think of a fitting message for your Father’s Day card. So, here’s a selection of some of our favorite poems about what being a father means.
Only a dad, but he gives his all
To smooth the way for his children small,
Doing, with courage stern and grim,
The deeds that his father did for him.
This is the line that for him I pen,
Only a dad, but the best of men.
–Edgar Guest (1881–1959)
My father moved through theys of we,
singing each new leaf out of each tree
(and every child was sure that spring
danced when she heard my father sing).
–E.E. Cummings (1894–1962)
He never made a fortune, or a noise
In the world where men are seeking after fame;
But he had a healthy brood of girls and boys
Who loved the very ground on which he trod.
They thought him just a little short of God;
Oh you should have heard the way they said his name—‘Father.’
–Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919)
A boy and his dad on a fishing-trip—
Builders of life’s companionship!
Oh, I envy them, as I see them there
Under the sky in the open air,
For out of the old, old long-ago
Come the summer days that I used to know,
When I learned life’s truths from my father’s lips
As I shared the joy of his fishing-trips.
–Edgar Guest (1881–1959)
“My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.”
–Clarence Budington Kelland, American writer (1881-1964), about his father
“I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.”
–Umberto Eco, Italian novelist (1932-2016)
“His heritage to his children wasn’t words or possessions, but an unspoken treasure, the treasure of his example as a man and a father.”
–Will Rogers, Jr., American politician (1911–93)
“A father is someone you look up to no matter how tall you grow.”
–Unknown
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