Home Thoughts, from Abroad / Robert Browning

Home-Thoughts, from Abroad is a poem by Robert Browning. It was written in 1845 while Browning was on a visit to northern Italy, and was first published in his Dramatic Romances and Lyrics.

Full text

 * OH, to be in England
 * Now that April 's there,
 * And whoever wakes in England
 * Sees, some morning, unaware,
 * That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
 * Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
 * While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
 * In England—now!


 * And after April, when May follows,
 * And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
 * Hark, where my blossom'd pear-tree in the hedge
 * Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
 * Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray's edge—
 * That 's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
 * Lest you should think he never could recapture
 * The first fine careless rapture!
 * And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
 * All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
 * The buttercups, the little children's dower
 * —Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

Recognition
In 1995, Home Thoughts was voted 46th in a BBC poll to find the United Kingdom's favourite poems.

In popular culture
Home thoughts from Abroad is the title of a song by Clifford T Ward, part of his 1973 album Home Thoughts. The song contains the lyrics: "I've been reading Browning.... You know, Home Thoughts from Abroad is such a beautiful poem / And I know how Browning must have felt / Because I'm feeling the same way about you."

Home Thoughts from Abroad is also the title of a poem by John Buchan about World War I.