Home and the Children - Edgar A. Guest

What is home for, anyway,
If it’s not for the children to play?
What is the use of rugs and chairs
If they cannot call them theirs?
Why are rooms and floors and halls,
Banisters and papered walls
If they do not furnish joy
For some little girl or boy?

Who would keep his house or flat
Echoing with “don’t do that?”
Who would have his home a tomb,
Sending little ones away
Stilling all their laughter gay
Just to keep in good repair
Parlor floor or couch or chair?

Seems to me that home’s a place
Where the youngsters ought to race;
Where the toys should lie about
Strewn in childhood’s happy rout,
And the walls should, here and there,
Show some smudgy symbol where
Sticky hand had been.

Home should never be too clean.
Better far the marks of feet
On the varnished rungs of chairs
And the glad disorder which
Prove the home with joys is rich,
Than the mansion’s stiff brocade
Where no child has ever played.

Edgar A. Guest