I have wander'd afar, 'neath stranger skies,
And have revell'd amid their flowers;
I have lived in the light of Italian eyes,
And dream'd in Italian bowers,
While the wondrous strains of their sunny clime
Have been trill'd to enchant mine ears,
But, oh, how I longed for the song and the time
When my heart could respond with its tears.
Then sing me a song, a good old song--
Not the foreign, the learn'd, the grand--
But a simple song, a good old song
Of my own dear fatherland.
I have heard, with the great, and the proud, and the gay
All, all they would have me adore
Of that music divine that, enraptured, they say
Can be equall'd on earth never more.
And it may be their numbers indeed are divine,
Though they move not my heart through mine ears,
But a ballad old of the dear "langsyne"
Can alone claim my tribute of tears.
I have come from a far and a foreign clime
To mine own loved haunts once more,
With a yearning for all of my childhood's time
And the dear home-sounds of yore;
And here, if there yet be love for me,
Oh, away with those stranger lays,
And now let my only welcome be
An old song of my boyhood's days.