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The world is filled with bustle and with selfishness and greed,
It is filled with restless people that are dreaming of a deed.
You can read it on their faces; they are dreaming of the day
When they’ll come to fame and fortune and put all their cares away.
And I think as I behold them, though it’s far indeed they roam,
They will never find contentment save they seek for it at home.

I watch them as they hurry through the surging lines of men,
Spurred to speed by grim ambition, and I know they’re dreaming then.
They are weary, sick and footsore, but their goal seems far away,
And it’s little they’ve accomplished at the ending of the day.
It is rest they’re vainly seeking, love and laughter in the gloam,
But they’ll never claim to have it, save they claim it here at home.

For the peace that is the sweetest isn’t born of minted gold,
And the joy that lasts the longest and still lingers when we’re old
Is no dim and distant pleasure—it is not tomorrow’s prize,
It is not the end of toiling or the rainbow of our sighs.
It is every day within us—all the rest is hippodrome—
And the soul that is the gladdest is the soul that builds a home.

They are fools who build for glory! They are fools who pin their hopes
On the come and go of battles or some vessel’s slender ropes.
They shall sicken and shall wither and shall never peace attain
Who believe that real contentment only men victorious gain.
For the only happy toilers under earth’s majestic dome
Are the ones who find their glories in the little spot called home.


Edgar A. Guest