What if in Scotland's wilds we viel'd our head,
Where tempests whistle round the sordid bed;
Where read more

What if in Scotland's wilds we viel'd our head,
Where tempests whistle round the sordid bed;
Where the rug's two-fold use we might display,
By night a blanket, and a plaid by day.

What's the good of a home if you are never in it?

What's the good of a home if you are never in it?

His native home deep imag'd in his soul.

His native home deep imag'd in his soul.

There is no place more delightful than one's own fireside.
[Lat., Nullus est locus domestica sede jucundior.]

There is no place more delightful than one's own fireside.
[Lat., Nullus est locus domestica sede jucundior.]

One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever come to sit by it. Passersby read more

One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever come to sit by it. Passersby see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on the way.

My whinstone house my castle is,
I have my own four walls.

My whinstone house my castle is,
I have my own four walls.

Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered read more

Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.

The stately Homes of England,
How beautiful they stand!
Amidst their tall ancestral trees,
read more

The stately Homes of England,
How beautiful they stand!
Amidst their tall ancestral trees,
O'er all the pleasant land.

Construed as turf, home just seems a provisional claim, a designation you make upon a place, not one it makes read more

Construed as turf, home just seems a provisional claim, a designation you make upon a place, not one it makes on you. A certain set of buildings, a glimpsed, smudged window-view across a schoolyard, a musty aroma sniffed behind a garage when you were a child, all of which come crowding in upon your latter-day senses -- those are pungent things and vivid, even consoling. But to me they are also inert and nostalgic and unlikely to connect you to the real, to that essence art can sometimes achieve, which is permanence.