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Homeward


Behind a trench in Flanders the sun was dropping low,
With tramp, and creak and jingle I heard the gun-teams go;
And something seemed to 'mind me, a-dreaming as I lay,
Of my own old Hampshire village at the quiet end of day.

Brown thatch and gardens blooming with lily and with rose,
And the cool shining river so pleasant  where he flows,
White fields of oats and barley, and elderflower like foam,
And the sky gold with sunset, and the horses going home!

(Home, lad, home, all among the corn and clover!
Home, lad, home when the time for work is over!
Oh there's rest for horse and man when the longest day is done
And they go home together at setting of the sun!)

Old Captain, Prince and Blossom, I see them all so plain,
With tasseled ear-caps nodding along the leafy lane,
There's a bird somewhere calling, and the swallow flying low,
And the lads sitting sideways, and singing as they go.

Well gone is many a lad now, and many a horse gone too,
Off all those lads and horses in those old fields I knew;
There's Dick that died at Cuinchy and Prince beside the guns
On the red road of glory, a mile or two from Mons!

Dead lads and shadowy horses — I see them just the same,
I see them and I know them, and name them each by name,
Going down to shining waters when all the West's a-glow,
And the lads sitting sideways and singing as they go.

(Home, lad, home . . .  with the sunset on their faces!
Home, lad, home . . .  to those quiet happy places!
There's rest for horse and man when the hardest fight is done,
And they go home together at setting of the sun!)

Notes

From SONGS AND CHANTIES 1914-1916, edited by Cicely Fox Smith, published by Elkin Mathews, London, UK, © 1919, pp. 216-218. First published in FIGHTING MEN by Elkin Mathews in 1916 pp 48-50.

During World War 1, horses were conscripted as well as men!
This poem is written from the view-point of a soldier laying at temporary ease one evening in Flanders. He hears the sound of harnessed horses pulling gun carriages and is reminded of his peace-time life in Hampshire (Southern England) when he would hear the same evening sounds but of horses pulling carts carrying the labourers back from the fields. He mourns 'both horse and man' but also the passing from peace to war. Note the slight changes in the refrain verse.

Sarah Morgan (UK) has adapted this poem for singing ("Home Boys Home") and a version may be heard on "SING THE SUN INTO THE SKY" as recorded by Two Black Sheep & a Stallion; Morgan found a version of the poem, called "Going Home Together," in the magazine THIS ENGLAND in 1984, as contributed by a soldier who considered the poem anonymous.

It is interesting to note that CFS probably intended this as song when she wrote it since it is published with a chorus (enclosed in brackets) that can be used throughout though slightly altered in the final repetition.

The header graphic is of the British Royal Horse Artillery in World War 1.
Jim Saville and Charley Noble

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