Riley Songs of Home | Page 4

THROUGH SLEEPY-LAND
170
TO MY OLD FRIEND, WILLIAM LEACHMAN
145
TO THE JUDGE
177
WE MUST BELIEVE
130
WE MUST GET HOME
19
WHERE-AWAY
57
WHO BIDES HIS TIME
68
WRITIN' BACK TO THE HOME-FOLKS
76

RILEY SONGS OF HOME
[Illustration]
WE MUST GET HOME
We must get home! How could we stray like this?--
So far from home,
we know not where it is,--
Only in some fair, apple-blossomy place

Of children's faces--and the mother's face--
We dimly dream it, till
the vision clears
Even in the eyes of fancy, glad with tears.
We must get home--for we have been away
So long, it seems forever
and a day!
And O so very homesick we have grown,
The laughter
of the world is like a moan
In our tired hearing, and its song as vain,--

We must get home--we must get home again!
We must get home! With heart and soul we yearn
To find the

long-lost pathway, and return!...
The child's shout lifted from the
questing band
Of old folk, faring weary, hand in hand,
But faces
brightening, as if clouds at last
Were showering sunshine on us as we
passed.
We must get home: It hurts so staying here,
Where fond hearts must
be wept out tear by tear,
And where to wear wet lashes means, at best,

When most our lack, the least our hope of rest--
When most our
need of joy, the more our pain--
We must get home--we must get
home again!
[Illustration]
We must get home--home to the simple things--
The morning-glories
twirling up the strings
And bugling color, as they blared in blueAnd

-white o'er garden-gates we scampered through;
The long
grape-arbor, with its under-shade
Blue as the green and purple
overlaid.
We must get home: All is so quiet there:
The touch of loving hands
on brow and hair--
Dim rooms, wherein the sunshine is made mild--

The lost love of the mother and the child
Restored in restful
lullabies of rain,--
We must get home--we must get home again!
The rows of sweetcorn and the China beans
Beyond the lettuce-beds
where, towering, leans
The giant sunflower in barbaric pride

Guarding the barn-door and the lane outside;
The honeysuckles,
midst the hollyhocks,
That clamber almost to the martin-box.
We must get home, where, as we nod and drowse,
Time humors us
and tiptoes through the house,
And loves us best when sleeping
baby-wise,
With dreams--not tear-drops--brimming our clenched
eyes,--
Pure dreams that know nor taint nor earthly stain--
We must
get home--we must get home again!

We must get home! The willow-whistle's call
Trills crisp and liquid
as the waterfall--
Mocking the trillers in the cherry-trees
And
making discord of such rhymes as these,
That know nor lilt nor
cadence but the birds
First warbled--then all poets afterwards.
We must get home; and, unremembering there
All gain of all
ambition otherwhere,
Rest--from the feverish victory, and the crown

Of conquest whose waste glory weighs us down.--
Fame's fairest
gifts we toss