A Home Song
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| From Family portraits |
By Henry van Dyke,
The White Bees and Other Poems, 1909
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| From Family portraits |
I read within a poet’s book
A word that starred the page:
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| From Family portraits |
“Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage!”
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| From Family portraits |
Yes, that is true; and something more
You’ll find, where’er you roam,
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| From Family portraits |
That marble floors and gilded walls
Can never make a home.
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| From Family portraits |
But, every house where Love abides,
And Friendship is a guest,
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| From Family portraits |
Is surely home, and home-sweet-home:
For there the heart can rest.
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| From Family portraits |