Sweet, Sweet Home

Today is the birthday of John Howard Payne, the actor who wrote the lyrics for one of the most famous English songs of the modern era, "Home, Sweet Home," about which the Scottish journalist and poet Charles Mackay said:

[It] has done more than statesmanship or legislation to keep alive in the hearts of the people the virtues that flourish at the fireside, and to recall to its hallowed circle the wanderers who stray from it.

The song is in fact an excerpt from Sir Henry Bishop's opers Clari, or the Maid of Milan, which premiered at Covent Garden in 1823. This is probably my favorite recording of it, by the incomparable Amelita Galli-Curci in 1917.

The lyrics:

Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble there's no place like home!
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,
Which, seek through the world, is not met with elsewhere:
Home! Home! sweet, sweet Home!
There's no place like Home!
There's no place like Home!

An exile from home splendor dazzles in vain
Oh, give me my lowly thatched cottage again,
The birds singing gaily that came at my call,
Give me them with the peace of mind dearer than all.
Home! Home! sweet, sweet Home!
There's no place like Home!
There's no place like Home!