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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

HOMECOMING, by                    
First Line: When brothers leave the old hearthstone
Last Line: Sweet may their dreamless slumber be
Subject(s): Home


WHEN brothers leave the old hearthstone
And go, each one, a separate way,
We think, as we go on alone
Along our pathway, day by day,
Of olden scenes and faces dear,
Of voices that we miss so much;
And memory brings the absent near,
Until we almost feel the touch
Of loving hands, and hear once more
The dear old voices ringing out,
As in that happy time of yore,
Ere life had caught a shade of doubt.

If you should place against your ear
The shell you plundered from the sea,
Down in its hidden heart you'd hear
A low and tender melody;
A murmur of the restless tide,
A yearning born of memory;
And though its yearnings be denied,
The shell keeps singing of the sea.
And sometimes when old memories throng
Like ghosts the memories of our soul,
We feel the yearning, deep and strong,
A longing we cannot control,
To lay our care and business by,
And seek the old familiar ways,
And cross home's threshold, and sit down
With comrades of our earlier days.

For though our paths are sundered wide,
We feel that we are brothers yet,
And by and by we turn aside
From hurrying care and worldly fret,
And each one wanders back to meet
His brother by the hearth of home;
I think the meeting is more sweet
Because so far and wide we roam.
We cross the lengthening bridge of years,
Meet outstretched hands and faces true;
The silent eloquence of tears
Speaks welcome that no words can do.

But ah, the meeting holds regret!
The sad, sad story, often told,
Of hands that ours have often met,
Close folded under churchyard mould;
Of eyes that smiled into our own,
Closed in the dreamless sleep of God;
A sweeter rest was never known
Than theirs, beneath the grave's white sod.
A tender thought for them to-night,
A tribute tear from memory;
Beneath their covering of white
Sweet may their dreamless slumber be.





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