Childhood's Happy Home, and Other Verses

These are poems written by someone who understood that memory itself is a kind of grief. Kayhart's verses operate in that tender space between remembering and longing, where childhood homes become palaces and lost loved ones live again in verse. Written in 1921, this collection carries the particular sweetness and sorrow of an era when radio was new and old ways were already fading. The poems move through landscapes both geographic and emotional: the warmth of a mother's kitchen, the freedom of childhood summers, the terrible weight of absence. Kayhart writes about death without flinching, finding in the afterlife not doctrine but consolation, a place where the departed wait. His language is simple, almost plain, but that plainness is deceptive. For readers who have stood in an empty room and heard the silence where a voice used to be. For those who understand that some doors only open inward. These are poems for quiet hours, for the middle of the night, for the moment when you realize your own childhood is now something you can only visit in memory.