Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Wednesday, April 9th, 2025.

Today's poem is by Robert Browning, and it's called Home Thoughts from Abroad.

I'll read it once, offer a few comments, and read it one more time.

Home thoughts from abroad.

1.

Oh, to be in England, now that April's there, and whoever wakes in England sees some morning, unaware, that the lowest bows and the brushwood sheaf round the elm tree bowl are in tiny leaf,

while the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough in England, now. Two.

And after April, when May follows, and the white throat builds and all the swallows,

hark, where my blossomed pear tree in the hedge

leans to the field and scatters on the clover blossoms and dewdrops. At the bent sprays edge,

that's the wise thrush. He sings each song twice over, lest you should think he never could

recapture the first fine careless rapture.

And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,

all will be gay when noontide wakes anew,

the buttercups, the little children's dower,

far brighter than this gaudy melon flower.

We have here the poem of an Englishman abroad.

And even in the language of the poem, there are a lot of anglo-leaning vocabulary choices.

The title itself, Home Thoughts from Abroad, Home Thought itself, home thoughts from abroad. Home thoughts is very anglicized. It's not reminiscences or nostalgia or any sort of Frankish or Latinate kind of phrasing.

This is language steeped in England because it longs for England.

We get a clue in the very last line to the possible location of the speaker, maybe the Levant,

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