Home and Household

And remembering… Remembering, with twinklings and twinges, As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths, tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.

Home-made, home-made! But aren’t we all?

Should we have stayed at home, wherever that may be?

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated Of dead and living. Not the intense moment Isolated, with no before and after, But a lifetime burning in every moment And not the lifetime of one man only But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.

Stands the church clock at ten to three? And is there honey still for tea?

It takes a heap o’ livin’ in a house t’ make it home, A heap o’ sun an’ shadder, an’ ye sometimes have Afore ye really ’preciate the things ye lef’ behind, An’ hunger fer ’em somehow, with ’em allus on yer mind.

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

Daughter am I in my mother’s house; But mistress in my own.

Be it granted me to behold you again in dying, Hills of home!

Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill.

Eden is that old-fashioned House We dwell in every day Without suspecting our abode Until we drive away.

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church— I keep it, staying at Home— With a bobolink for a Chorister— And an Orchard, for a Dome—

’Tis sweet to hear the watchdog’s honest bark Bay deep-mouth’d welcome as we draw near home; ’Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark Our coming, and look brighter when we come.

Is this the hill? is this the kirk? Is this mine own countree?

Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, And, while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn Throws up a steamy column, and the cups, That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each, So let us welcome peaceful evening in.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care.

I’ve often wish’d that I had clear, For life, six hundred pounds a year; A handsome house to lodge a friend, A river at my garden’s end, A terrace walk, and half a rood Of land set out to plant a wood.

Happy the man whose wish and care A few paternal acres bound, Content to breathe his native air In his own ground.

Ah yet, ere I descend to the grave May I a small house and large garden have; And a few friends, and many books, both true, Both wise, and both delightful too!

Duncan: This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle senses. Banquo: This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve By his lov’d mansionry that the heaven’s breath Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle: Where they most breed and haunt, I have observ’d The air is delicate.

A home without a cat — and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat — may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?

One may make their house a palace of sham, or they can make it a home, a refuge.

Real travel requires a maximum of unscheduled wandering, for there is no other way of discovering surprises and marvels, which, as I see it, is the only good reason for not staying at home.