Home of my boyish days, how can I call
Scenes to my memory, that did befall?
How can my trembling pen find power to tell
The grief I experienced in bidding farewell?
Can I forget the days joyously spent,
That flew on so rapidly, sweet with content?
Can I then quit thee, whose memory’s so dear,
Home of my boyish days, without one tear?

Can I look back on days that’s gone by,
Without one pleasant thought, without one sigh?
Oh, no! though never more these eyes may dwell
On thee, old cottage home, I love so well:
Home of my childhood, wherever I be,
Thou art the nearest and dearest to me.
Can I forget the songs sung by my sire,
Like some prophetic bard tuning the lyre?
Sweet were the notes that he taught to the young;
Psalms for the Sabbath on Sabbath were sung;
And the young minstrels enraptured would come
To the lone cottage I once called my home.

Can I forget the dear landscape around,
Where in my boyish days I could be found,
Stringing my hazel-bow, roaming the wood,
Fancying myself to be bold Robin Hood?
Then would my mother say—where is he gone?
I’m waiting of shuttles that he should have won:
She in that cottage there knitting her healds,
While I her young forester was roaming the fields.

But the shades of the evening gather slowly around,
The twilight it thickens and darkens the ground,
Night’s sombre mantle is spreading the plain.
And as I turn round to look on thee again,
To take one fond look, one last fond adieu;
By night’s envious hand thou art snatched from my view,
But O, there’s no darkness, to me no decay;
Home of my boyhood, can chase thee away.