Lyric Poem · Nature
Home Thoughts, From Abroad
1Oh, to be in England
2Now that April's there,
3And whoever wakes in England
4Sees, some morning, unaware,
5That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
6Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
7While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
8In England — now!
9And after April, when May follows,
10And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows!
11Hark I where my blossomed pear tree in the hedge
12Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
13Blossoms and dewdrops — at the bent spray's edge —
14That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
15Lest you should think he never could recapture
16The first fine careless rapture!
17And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
18All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
19The buttercups, the little children's dower
20 — Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!
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“Home Thoughts, From Abroad” by Robert Browning — quilloak.com/poems/home-thoughts-from-abroad
Quick facts
- Poem
- Home Thoughts, From Abroad
- Poet
- Robert Browning
- Length
- 20 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem
- Themes
- Nature, Spring, Childhood
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 20 lines · 2 stanzas of 8–12 lines
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Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.
- Author record
- Robert Browning1812–1889
- Source record
- PoetryDBHome Thoughts, From Abroad by robert-browning, PoetryDB transcription
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- Not recorded in the imported source
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 646cbacb37639c66…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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