Dorothy Parker immortalized the Wassermann test in a two-line poem of the 1920s:
"I'd rather fail my Wassermann test
Than read a poem by Edgar A. Guest."
And here follows an example of why Dorothy Parker wrote that poem:
Only a Dad
Only a dad with a tired face,
Coming home from the daily race,
Bringing little of gold or fame,
To show how well he has played the game,
But glad in his heart that his own rejoice
To see him come and to hear his voice.
Only a dad with a brood of four,
One of ten million men or more.
Plodding along in the daily strife,
Bearing the whips and the scorns of life,
With never a whimper of pain or hate,
For the sake of those who at home await.
Only a dad, neither rich nor proud,
Merely one of the surging crowd
Toiling, striving from day to day,
Facing whatever may come his way,
Silent, whenever the harsh condemn,
And bearing it all for the love of them.
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.
I was fairly astonished to find this poem by Edgar A. Guest on the Poetry Foundation web site, but infer that the editors have decided to dump onto their site examples of poems of anybody who was famous for writing poems at any point in history, no matter how awful in retrospect.