1. Adventure
2. Animals
3. Beauty
4. Bereavement
5. Birds
6. Carpe Diem
7. Children
8. Dance
9. Death
10. Descriptions
11. Faith & Religion
12. Family & Home
13. Flowers
14. Food & Drink
15. Friendship
16. Garden
17. Heroes
18. History
19. Holidays
20. Humor
21. Images
22. Imagination
23. Inspiration
24. Life
25. Love
26. Machines
27. Marriage
28. Memorials
29. Memory
30. Months
31. Music
32. Mystery
33. Nature
34. Parodies
35. Parting
36. Patriotism
37. People
38. Places
39. Poetry
40. Protest
41. Rhyme & Rhythm
42. Satire
43. School
44. Sea & Sailing
45. Seasons
46. Song
47. Sport
48. Stages of Life
49. Story Telling
50. Time
51. Time of Day
52. Travel
53. War
54. Weather

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Subject Index - Family and Home

Family, to me, has always been an elastic concept. There is immediate family, extended family, adopted family (the informal kind), there are additions by birth, marriage and adoption, and sadly there are subtractions. One of my favorite quotes on family is by poet and author G.K. Chesterton:

The family is the test of freedom, because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself."
--Gilbert K. Chesterton

Simply put: the family is the thing you associate yourself with more strongly than anything else. For those of us in western cultures, it is our equivalent of tribal identity. There is a protective instinct, a nesting instinct, and nurturing instinct, and a thousand more nuances that flow out of the idea of family.

Home, anyone's concept of home, is likewise an elastic concept. It is a matter of personal experience. My favorite definition of home is from a fictional disabled war veteran, who explained that:

Home is the place where the people who love you are at. Nothing else matters."
--Dak Winter

You will note that some of the included examples have a wistful nature to them. Others are on the nature of homilies, and still others anbout the meaning of home and family. If any one poet could be considered to 'own' this category, my nod would go to Christopher Morley. There are several selections here (and could easily be many more) from Chimneysmoke.

1. Our Little Ghost by Louisa May Alcott


2. Boyhood by Washington Allston
   Fond memories of early life.


3. Motherhood by Mathilde Blind


4. Sonnet upon a Swedish Cottage by Sir John Carr


5. Frost at Midnight by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
   Thoughts to a child on what his life will hold.


6. Truly Great by W. H. Davies
   Contentment with home, garden and mate.


7. The Boy by W. H. Davies
   On enjoying childhood without cares.


8. Parenthood by John Chipman Farrar


9. Beautiful Hands by Emma M. H. Gates


10. Home by Edgar Guest
    It takes a heap o' livin' in a house t' make it home.>


11. A Thanksgiving to God for His House by Robert Herrick


12. A Country Boy in Winter by Sarah Orne Jewett


13. Mother O' Mine by Rudyard Kipling


14. The Children's Hour by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


15. The Baby by George MacDonald


16. Dedication for a Fireplace by Christopher Morley


17. Six Weeks Old by Christopher Morley


18. Song for a Little House by Christopher Morley


19. Our House by Christopher Morley


20. On Naming a House by Christopher Morley


21. The Toys by Coventry Patmore


22. Home Sweet Home by John Howard Payne
    Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.


23. To Miss Charlotte Pulteney, in Her Mother's Arms by Ambrose Philips


24. To My Mother by Edgar Allen Poe


25. Good-bye, Little Cabin by Robert W. Service


26. Home and Love by Robert W. Service


27. The Discoverer by Edmund Clarence Stedman


28. The Hand That Rocks The Cradle Is The Hand That Rules The World by William Ross Wallace


29. My Home by Ella Wheeler Wilcox