Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Stay, Stay at Home My Heart

Birds Of Passage. Flight The Fifth

Stay, Stay at Home My Heart - meaning Summary

Home as Refuge

Longfellow's short lyric urges inward calm and domestic stability. The speaker addresses his heart, warning that wandering brings weariness, doubt, and danger while home provides safety and rest. Refrains stress that staying put is wise; the poem likens a settled life to a bird safe in its nest and contrasts it with exposure to a hovering hawk. The moral privileges rootedness over restless adventure.

Read Complete Analyses

Stay, stay at home, my heart, and rest; Home-keeping hearts are happiest, For those that wander they know not where Are full of trouble and full of care; To stay at home is best. Weary and homesick and distressed, They wander east, they wander west, And are baffled and beaten and blown about By the winds of the wilderness of doubt; To stay at home is best. Then stay at home, my heart, and rest; The bird is safest in its nest; O'er all that flutter their wings and fly A hawk is hovering in the sky; To stay at home is best.

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