"A Home Song" || Poem by Henry van Dyke (1909)

         A Home Song

I read within a poet's book
A word that starred the page:
"Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage!"

Yes, that is true; and something more
You'll find, where'er you roam,
That marble floors and gilded walls
Can never make a home.

But every house where Love abides,
And Friendship is a guest,
Is surely home, and home-sweet-home:
For there the heart can rest.

This poem is in the public domain.

Henry van Dyke Jr. (1852-1933) was an American Presbyterian clergyman, educator, poet and author. He was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania and was the son of Henry Jackson van Dyke Sr. a prominent Brooklyn Presbyterian clergyman known in the antebellum years for his anti-abolitionist views. Van Dyke Jr graduated from Princeton University and from Princeton Theological Seminary. He was pastor of the Brick Presbyterian Church, New York City, professor of English literature at Princeton and U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands. Among his popular inspirational writings is the Christmas story, "The Other Wise Man" published in1896.