When souls take wings upon the scented air
    Of starry meadows, and the yearning heart
    Pains with deep sweetness in the balmy time,
    Than these gray morns, and days of misty blue,
    And surges, never-ceasing;—­for our prow
    Points to the sunset like a morning ray,
    And o’er the waves, and through the sweeping storms,
    Through day and darkness, rushes ever on,
    Westward and westward still!  What joy can send
    The spirit thrilling onward with the wind,
    In untamed exultation, like the thought
    That fills the Homeward Bound?

                              Country and home! 
    Ah! not the charm of silver-tongued romance,
    Born of the feudal time, nor whatsoe’er
    Of dying glory fills the golden realms
    Of perished song, where heaven-descended Art
    Still boasts her later triumphs, can compare
    With that one thought of liberty inherited—­
    Of free life giv’n by fathers who were free,
    And to be left to children freer still! 
    That pride and consciousness of manhood, caught
    From boyish musings on the holy graves
    Of hero-martyrs, and from every form
    Which virgin Nature, mighty and unchained,
    Takes in an empire not less proudly so—­
    Inspired in mountain airs, untainted yet
    By thousand generations’ breathing—­felt
    Like a near presence in the awful depths
    Of unhewn forests, and upon the steep
    Where giant rivers take their maddening plunge—­
    Has grown impatient of the stifling damps
    Which hover close on Europe’s shackled soil. 
    Content to tread awhile the holy steps
    Of Art and Genius, sacred through all time,
    The spirit breathed that dull, oppressive air—­
    Which, freighted with its tyrant-clouds, o’erweighs
    The upward throb of many a nation’s soul—­
    Amid those olden memories, felt the thrall. 
    But kept the birth-right of its freer home,
    Here, on the world’s blue highway, comes again
    The voice of Freedom, heard amid the roar
    Of sundered billows, while above the wave
    Rise visions of the forest and the stream. 
    Like trailing robes the morning mists uproll,
    Torn by the mountain pines; the flashing rills
    Shout downward through the hollows of the vales;
    Down the great river’s bosom shining sails
    Glide with a gradual motion, while from all—­
    Hamlet, and bowered homestead, and proud town—­
    Voices of joy ring up into heaven!

    Yet louder, winds!  Urge on our keel, ye waves,
    Swift as the spirit’s yearnings!  We would ride
    With a loud stormy motion o’er your crests,
    With tempests shouting like a sudden joy—­
    Interpreting our triumph!  ’Tis your voice,
    Ye unchained elements, alone can speak
    The sympathetic feeling of the free—­
    The arrowy impulse of the Homeward Bound!