The world is filled with bustle and with selfishness and greed, <br />It is filled with restless people that are dreaming of a deed. <br />You can read it in their faces; they are dreaming of the day <br />When they'll come to fame and fortune and put all their cares away. <br />And I think as I behold them, though it's far indeed they roam, <br />They will never find contentment save they seek for it at home. <br />I watch them as they hurry through the surging lines of men, <br />Spurred to speed by grim ambition, and I know they're dreaming then. <br />They are weary, sick and footsore, but their goal seems far away, <br />And it's little they've accomplished at the ending of the day. <br />It is rest they're vainly seeking, love and laughter in the gloam, <br />But they'll never come to claim it, save they claim it here at home. <br />For the peace that is the sweetest isn't born of minted gold, <br />And the joy that lasts the longest and still lingers when we're old <br />Is no dim and distant pleasure—it is not to-morrow's prize, <br />It is not the end of toiling, or the rainbow of our sighs. <br />It' is every day within us—all the rest is hippodrome— <br />And the soul that is the gladdest is the soul that builds a home. <br />They are fools who build for glory! They are fools who pin their hopes <br />On the come and go of battles or some vessel's slender ropes. <br />They shall sicken and shall wither and shall never peace attain <br />Who believe that real contentment only men victorious gain. <br />For the only happy toilers under earth's majestic dome <br />Are the ones who find their glories in the little spot called home.<br /><br />Edgar Albert Guest<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-home-builders/
