COME HOME

Come home, come home,
there’s a sorrowing breath in music since you went,
and the early flower-scents wander by the mournful memories blent.

The tones in every household voice are grown more sad and deep:
and the sweet word “bother”,
it wakes a wish to turn aside and weep (to turn aside and weep)

Oh, ye beloved, come home, come home!
The hour of many a greeting tone
The time of hearth-light and of song returns and ye are gone;
and darkly heavily it falls on the coomb

Burdening the heart with tenderness,
that deepens mid the gloom.

Where finds it you you wandering one!
With all your boyhood’s glee untamed?
Beneath, beneath the desert’s palm?

or on the sea, the lone mid-sea?
By stormy hills of battles old? or dark rivers foam?
Oh, life is dim where ye are not. Black, ye beloved, come home.

Come with the leaves and winds of spring,
and swift birds over the main!
Our love has grown too sorrowful, bring us its youth again.
Bring the tone, the glad tone to music,

Your home,
Still, still, your home is fair and the spirit of your sunny life –
alone is wanting there, a love is wanting there.