Nature

Home-Sickness

by Ivor Gurney 1890–1937

From Severn & Somme (1917)

Nature

When we go wandering the wide air’s blue spaces,
Bare, unhappy, exiled souls of men;
How will our thoughts over and over again
Return to Earth’s familiar lovely places,
Where light with shadow ever interlaces--
No blanks of blue, nor ways beyond man’s ken--
Where birds are, and flowers, as violet, and wren,
Blackbird, bluebell, hedge-sparrow, tiny daisies.

O tiny things, but very stuff of soul
To us ... so frail.... Remember what we are;
Set us not on some strange outlandish star,
But one caring for Love. Give us a Home.
There we may wait while the long ages roll
Content, unfrightened by vast Time-to-come.

MLA

Gurney, Ivor. “Home-Sickness.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/gurney/79/.

Chicago

Gurney, Ivor. “Home-Sickness.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/gurney/79/.

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