The Home Builders
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 in 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.
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 to-morrow’s prise,
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.
Alternate Reading: I Corinthians 15:12-58.