Home No More Home to Me, Whither Must I Wander?

by Robert Louis Stevenson
Home no more home to me, whither must I wander?
Hunger my driver, I go where I must.
Cold blows the winter wind over hill and heather;
Thick drives the rain, and my roof is in the dust.
Loved of wise men was the shade of my roof-tree.
The true word of welcome was spoken in the door--
Dear days of old, with the faces in the firelight,
Kind folks of old, you come again no more.

Home was home then, my dear, full of kindly faces,
Home was home then, my dear, happy for the child.
Fire and the windows bright glittered on the moorland;
Song, tuneful song, built a palace in the wild.
Now, when day dawns on the broow of the moorland,
Lone stands the house, and the chimney-stone is cold.
Lone let is stand, now the friends are all departed,
The kind hearts, the true hearts, that loved the place of old.

Spring shall come, come again, calling up the moor-fowl,
Spring shall bring the sun and rain, bring the bees and flowers;
Red shall the heather bloom over hill and valley,
Soft flow the stream through the even-flowing hours;
Fair the day shine as it shone on my childhood--
Fair shine the day on the house with open door;
Birds come and cry there and twitter in the chimney--
But I go for ever and come again no more.

This ballad, written by the famous 19th century Scottish poet Robert Louis Stevenson, focuses on a main character who has discovered that his home has been lost - everything has changed. Family and friends have left, and the place has become deserted. The main character realizes that his his home is "no more home to me", and that he must "wander" elsewhere and never come back. The poem fits nicely into my theme of home because it hints at the importance of the home to the character, as well as how much joy the home once brought to him - this elicits the importance of the home to one person, and losing a home causes great grief and despair. Stevenson uses a particular rhyming pattern: the second and fourth lines, as well as the sixth and the eighth of every stanza, rhymes. There is a significant amount of imagery in all stanzas, for example, in the first stanza, Stevenson describes the state of his homeland: "cold blows the winter wind over hill and heather; Thick drives the rain, and my roof is in the dust.", giving us a clear image. In the second stanza, Stevenson uses a similar pattern to describe how his homeland once was (Fire and the windows bright glittered on the moorland). The use of imagery not only creates a more vivid image in our heads but also transfers emotion through the connotations of his description (stanza 1 - cold, dust, shade, old (negative); stanza 2 - glittered, tuneful, palace (positive)). In the sixth line, there is an example of a synecdoche: "The true word of welcome" is not just one word but in fact all of the warm greetings once exchanged in the main character's house. Generally, the poem holds a negative, melancholy tone, and this tone is strongly conveyed by Stevenson.