Love at Home

This old song was written by John Hugh McNaughton,[1] author of “The Faded Coat of Blue” and other popular songs.

There is beauty all around, when there’s love at home,

There is joy in every sound, when there’s love at home,

Peace and plenty here abide, smiling sweet on every side,

Time doth softly, sweetly glide, when there’s love at home.

Love at home, love at home,

Time doth softly, sweetly glide, when there’s love at home

In the cottage there is joy, when there’s love at home,

Hate and envy ne’er annoy, when there’s love at home,

Roses bloom beneath our feet, all the earth’s a garden sweet,

Making life a bliss complete, when there’s love at home.

Love at home, etc.

Kindly heaven smiles above, when there’s love at home,

All the world is filled with love, when there’s love at home,

Sweeter sings the brooklet by, brighter beams the azure sky,

Oh, there’s one who smiles on high, when there’s love at home

Love at home, etc.

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[1] John McNaughton was born in 1829 and died in 1901.  The following information is from folk musician Allen Hopkins who lives near McNaughton’s birthplace: (Source: seiyaku.com)

[McNaughton] lived in Caledonia, New York, about 30 miles southwest of Rochester. John was known as 'The Poet McNaughton' for composing many songs popular at the time, though few have survived to be sung today. Other than 'Love At Home,' perhaps his most famous was 'The Faded Coat of Blue,' about Union soldiers taken prisoner during the American Civil War. There is a monument to John Hugh McNaughton just outside Caledonia, on the site of the farm where he lived. 

Love Me Now

This little poem has been kindly sent in by a reader in response to a request.

If you are ever going to love me,

Love me now, that I may know

All the sweet and tender feelings

Which from real affection flow.

Love me now, while I am living,

Do not wait till I am gone

And then chisel it in marble,

Warm love words on ice cold stone.

If you wait till I am sleeping

Ne’er to waken here again,

There’ll be walls of earth between us

And I couldn’t hear you then.

If you knew someone was thirsting

For a drink of water sweet,

Would you be so slow to bring it?

Would you tread with laggard feet?

There are many all around us

Who are thirsting for our love.

Would we grudge to them what Heaven

Kindly sends us from above?

I won’t need your kind caresses

When the grass grows o’er my face;

I won’t crave your love nor kisses

In my last low resting place.

The Fruit of Love

Think of thy brother no ill, but throw a veil o’er his failings:

Guide the erring aright; for the Good, the Heavenly Shepherd

Took the lost lamb in his arms, and bore it back to its mother.

This is the fruit of love, and it is by its fruits that we know it.

-       Longfellow[1]

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[1] Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American educator and poet whose works include Paul Revere’s Ride, The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline. He was also the first American to translate Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy and was one of the five members of the group known as the Fireside Poets.

Longfellow was born in 1807 in Portland, Maine and studied at Bowdoin College. After spending time in Europe he became a professor at Bowdoin and, later, at Harvard College. His first major poetry collections were Voices of the Night (1839) and Ballads and Other Poems (1841). Longfellow retired from teaching in 1854 to focus on his writing, living the remainder of his life in Cambridge, Massachusetts in a former headquarters of George Washington. His first wife, Mary Potter, died in 1835 after a miscarriage. His second wife, Frances Appleton, died in 1861 after sustaining burns from her dress catching fire. Longfellow himself died in 1882.

Longfellow predominantly wrote lyric poems which were known for their musicality and which often presented stories of mythology and legend. He became the most popular American poet of his day and also had success overseas. (Source: Wikipedia)

A Love Song

O, wind of Night, soft-creeping,

Sweet charge I give to thee.

Steal where my love lies sleeping

And bear her dreams of me;

And in her dream, Love, let me seem

All she would have me be.

Kind sleep!  By thee we may attain

To joys long hoped and sought in vain,

By thee we all may find again our last divinity.

So, Night Wind, softly creeping,

This charge I give to thee.

Go where my love lies sleeping

And bear her dreams of me.

-       Jeffrey Farnol[1]

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[1] John Jeffrey Farnol (1878-1952) the author of romantic adventure stories, was born at Aston, Birmingham. His early studies included painting, and he became a talented artist. He spent eight years in America, living in Hell’s Kitchen and working as a scene painter in at the Astor Theater in New York City.  Following the successful publication of his first novel, The Broad Highway (1910), he returned to England. He had written the book years earlier, but had not found a publisher.  Rescued from neglect in a bureau drawer by his wife, who sent it to friends in England, the work established his reputation. His novels are likeable yarns of the open road set in the past, often in the Georgian or Regency period. Farnol’s work is more readable, perhaps, than that of Stanley Weyman, who may have inspired him, along with George Borrow. The Amateur Gentleman (1913) is probably his best remembered novel.  (Source: literaryheritage.org.uk)

Dear Heart

A Little Poem for the Old Folks

“We’ve gleaned the good from life, sweetheart,

We’ve struggled side by side;

In paths so filled with strife, dear heart,

You were a faithful guide,

And when the way was filled with pain,

With sorrow, care and woe,

You helped me to my feet again

From many a crushing blow.

“The years are rushing past, brave heart,

They’re bending you and me;

Still, love like ours shall last, true heart,

Through all eternity.

And should I be the first to leave

For realms beyond the blue,

Remember this, and do not grieve:

I’m waiting there for you.”

The Best Teachers

The best teachers in life are far from being those who know most or think themselves wisest.  Show me the schoolmaster who does not love his boys and I’ll show you one who is no use.

-       Grenfell[1]

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[1] Sir Wilfred Thomason Grenfell was born at Parkgate, England in 1865. He entered the London Medical School in 1883. Two years later, at a tent meeting of American evangelist Dwight L. Moody, he became converted to active Christianity. In 1888 he joined the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen.  The mission made him superintendent in 1889. In 1892, at the mission’s request, he cruised the Newfoundland and Labrador coast. There he got firsthand knowledge of the over 30,000 fishermen living temporarily in this area, who outnumbered permanent residents nearly 10 to 1. These people could only get medical help once a year, when the government doctor came through. Wilfred treated 900 patients in three months, and decided the region would be a great opportunity for medical and missionary work.

Wilfred raised funds to open the first hospital at Battle Harbour in 1893. He was a forceful speaker and easily gained the friendship of influential men. His medical mission grew rapidly with hospital, orphanage and nursing stations and the first co-operatives in Newfoundland. Wilfred did not winter in the North until 1899 and spent comparatively few winters there, establishing his headquarters at St. Anthony, Newfoundland.

A prolific writer and forceful publicist, he often used artistic license in accounts of life on the northern coasts. His main financial support came from the US. In 1909 he married a Chicago heiress, Anne MacClanahan, who took him away from coastal life. Growing friction with the mission eventually led to a split, and the International Grenfell Association was incorporated in 1912. Its practical medical work of was carried on by dedicated if autocratic doctors; Wilfred became increasingly involved in fund raising. He was made KCMG in 1927, the year he retired to Vermont. He died in Vermont in 1940. Famous in his lifetime, he is now largely forgotten; his papers are in the Yale medical history library.  (Source: Terence McCartney-Filgate in The Canadian Encyclopedia)

Love

Without love the exterior work profiteth nothing.

Her Value

I heard rather a pretty little story the other day.  A couple of young fellows were discussing home life, and one said his wife was such a smart, clever girl, and could play the piano well, and was fine at entertaining.  The other man thought for a moment when asked to give a description of his wife.  “I hardly know how to describe her,” he answered.  “She’s just a wee body with a big smile.” Now, could any man say anything sweeter?  His little lady was small, but had a big smile, and therein lay all that man’s happiness.

Mother-of-Pearl

Not from all shells in Indian bays

Are pearls to win;

For hath the gentle heart always

A love within.

But where the pearl hath lain, the shells

Show yet the sheen;

And there’s a soul-look that doth tell

Where love hath been.

What Love is Like

Love is like a lamb, and love is like a lion;

Fly from love he fights; fight, then does he fly on.

Love is all on fire, and yet is ever freezing;

Love is much on winning, yet is more in leesing[2]

Love is ever sick, and yet is never dying;

Love is ever true, and yet is ever lying.

Love does doat in liking, and is mad in loathing

Love indeed is everything, yet indeed is nothing.[1]

-       Thomas Middleton[3]

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[1] i.e. losing

[2] This is a song from Act II, Scene II of Middleton’s 1602 play Blurt, Master Constable.

[3] Thomas Middleton was born in London in 1580, son of a master bricklayer. He was educated first at Queen’s College, Oxford, and was then admitted at Gray’s Inn in 1593. He published three volumes of verse by 1600, and it is believed that he had already begun to write for the stage at that time. Certainly he was a working playwright by 1602, when he is mentioned in Henslowe’s Diary, and his earliest surviving independent play, Blurt, Master Constable (1602) was printed.
         

Middleton was an industrious, prolific author, writing for both Boys of St. Paul’s and the Admiral’s Men. His citizen comedies, written for boys’ companies between 1602 and 1607, include A Mad World, My Masters  (c.1605), A Trick to Catch the Old One  (c.1605) and Michaelmas Term  (c.1606). He collaborated with Dekker on three comedies. For the adult companies, he also wrote his masterpiece, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1611). These comedies expose bourgeois vice in contemporary London in a satiric tone. From 1613 on, Middleton wrote many City of London pageants for the Lord Mayor, and served as City Chronologer from 1620 until his death in 1627. He also continued to write plays.
         

Middleton’s patriotic drama, A Game at Chess (1624), unprecedentedly successful, was closed after nine performances due to its inflammatory anti-Spanish content and the Spanish Ambassador’s outrage. The writer and the actors were reprimanded and fined. One of Middleton’s last plays, Women Beware Women  (c.1625), was a tragedy in which the final “slaughter” scene verged on comedy, a matter which has persuaded some critics that Middleton was also the author of The Revenger’s Tragedy  (1607).  Middleton died of natural causes at Newington Butts and was buried there in 1627.  (Source: English Renaissance Drama at luminarium.org)  

The Greatest Thing

To love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love forever is to live forever.  Hence eternal life is inextricably bound up with love.  We want to live forever for the same reason that we want to live tomorrow.  Why do you want to live tomorrow?  It is because there is someone who loves you, and whom you want to see tomorrow, and to be with, and to love back.  There is no other reason why we should live on than that we love and are beloved.  No worse fate can befall a man in this world that to live and grow old alone, unloving and unloved.  To be lost is to live in an unregenerate condition, loveless and unloved; and to be saved is to love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth already in God, for God is love.[1]

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[1] This is a selection from The Greatest Thing in the World, an address by Henry Drummond. Drummond (1851-1897) was educated at Edinburgh University, where he displayed a strong inclination for physical and mathematical science. The religious element was an even more powerful factor in his nature, and disposed him to enter the Free Church of Scotland. While preparing for the ministry, he became for a time deeply interested in the evangelizing mission of Moody and Sankey, in which he actively cooperated for two years. In 1877 he became lecturer on natural science in the Free Church College, which enabled him to combine all the pursuits for which he felt a vocation. His studies resulted in his writing Natural Law in the Spiritual World, the argument of which was that the scientific principle of continuity extended from the physical world to the spiritual. Before the book issued from the press (1883), a sudden invitation from the African Lakes Company drew Drummond away to Central Africa.

Returning the next year, Henry found himself famous. Many serious readers, alike among the religious and the scientific classes, discovered in Natural Law the common standing-ground which they needed; and the universality of the demand proved, if nothing more, the seasonableness of its publication. Drummond continued to be actively interested in missionary and other movements among the Free Church students. In 1888 he published Tropical Africa, a valuable digest of information. In 1890 he traveled in Australia, and in 1893 delivered the Lowell Lectures at Boston. An attempted piracy compelled him to hasten their publication, and they appeared in 1894 under the title of The Ascent of Man. Drummond’s health failed shortly afterwards; he died in 1897.  (Source: Christian Classics Ethereal Library – ccel.org)

“Home” (partial)

“Home is not merely a place to eat, and sleep, and wash.  Home is love and affection, a hearthstone, a family circle, a rocking cradle, a mother’s lullaby song, a prattling child and a man’s strong [missing]

Loving

“I live for those who love me,

For those who know me true,

For the heaven that smiles above me

And waits my coming too.

For the cause that needs assistance,

For the wrong that needs resistance,

For the future in the distance,

For the good that I may do.”

-       C. L. Banks

Love

As for human beings, then surely it stands true, wherever else it may not, that all knowledge is love, and all love knowledge; that even with the meanest, we cannot gain a glimpse into their struggles and trials, without an increase of sympathy and affection.

Always With You

Say not “Welcome” when I come,

Nor “Farewell” tell me when I go;

For I come not when I come

And I go not when I go.

I am always, ever with you,

Always will be, so I pray,

I would never “Welcome” give you

And “Farewell” would never say.

Husband and Wife

Whatever I said and whatever you said,

I love you.

The word and the moment forever have fled.

I love you.

The breezes may ruffle the stream in its flow,

But tranquil and clear are the waters below;

And under all tumult you feel and you know

I love you.

Whatever you did and whatever I did,

I love you.

Whatever is open, whatever is hid,

I love you.

The strength of the oak makes the tempest a mock,

The anchor holds firm in the hurricane’s shock;

Our love is the anchor, the oak and the rock.

I love you.

Whatever I thought and whatever you thought,

I love you.

The mood and the passion that made it are naught;

I love you.

For words, thoughts and deeds, though they rankle and smart,

May never delude us nor hold us apart

Who treasure our talisman deep in the heart,

“I love you.”

-       Arthur Guiterman[1]

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[1] See footnote 1 of posting "Cold" for a biographical sketch of Arthur Guiterman