THE HOLY STOVE.
O the soap-vat is a common thing!
The pickle-tub is low!
The loom and wheel have lost their grace
In falling from the dwelling-place
To mills where all may go!
The bread-tray needeth not your love;
The wash-tub wide doth roam;
Even the oven free may rove;
But bow ye down to the Holy Stove,
The Altar of the Home!
Before it bend the worshippers,
And wreaths of parsley twine;
Above it still the incense curls,
And a passing train of hired girls
Do service at the shrine.
We toil to keep the altar crowned
With dishes new and nice,
And Art and Love, and Time and Truth,
We offer up, with Health and Youth,
In daily sacrifice.
Speak not to us of a fairer faith,
Of a lifetime free from pain.
Our fathers always worshipped here,
Our mothers served this altar drear,
And still we serve amain.
Our earliest dreams around it cling,
Bright hopes that childhood sees,
And memory leaves a vista wide
Where Mother’s Doughnuts rank beside
The thought of Mother’s Knees.
The wood-box hath no sanctity;
No glamour gilds the coal;
But the Cook-Stove is a sacred thing
To which a reverent faith we bring
And serve with heart and soul.
The Home’s a temple all divine,
By the Poker and the Hod!
The Holy Stove is the altar fine,
The wife the priestess at the shrine—
Now who can be the god?