My Old New England Home

Tonight my eyes are heavy and I do not care to read,

Nor pipe nor game nor theatre can fill my strange-like need;

My thoughts have gone cavorting to my old New England home,

The hills of old New England where I used to laugh and roam.

I cannot shake the yearning for a sight of it once more,

Where the roses still are climbing o’er the gray old kitchen door;

Where the giant trees are beck’ning, for each wand’rer, far or near,

To return unto his birthplace which has ever held him dear.

And above the city’s traffic I can hear the sounds of old;

I can hear the brooklet’s murmur where the willows still unfold.

I can hear the robin redbreast with his early morning calls,

And the splashing of the fishes as they try to leap the falls.

Then the whippoorwills and treetoads, as the twilight steals apace,

Make my present stuffy quarters seem an uninviting place;

And I hunger for the places where I used to laugh and roam,

And I hunger for the people of my old New England home.

There I know the fields are waving with their sea of grass and grain,

There the corn is standing proudly on the old familiar plain;

There the orchards still are blooming with their banks of pink and white,

And, beyond, the rugged hilltops, e’er a grand and wondrous sight.

Oh, I can’t withstand the voices that are bidding me “go home,

Go to welcome old New England where you used to laugh and roam;

It is ‘Old Home Week’ my brother,” and I listen to their prayer,

And my mind is made up fully when the time comes I’ll be there!

May 20, ‘05