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  • The Home-Coming
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The Home-Coming

Joseph Lee

When this blast is over-blown,
    And the beacon fires shall burn
              And in the street
              Is the sound of feet –
    They also shall return.
When the bells shall rock and ring,
    When the flags shall flutter free,
              And the choirs shall sing,
              ‘God save our King’ –
    They shall be there to see.
When the brazen bands shall play,
    And the silver trumpets blow,
              And the soldiers come
              To the tuck of drum –
    They shall be there also.
When that which was lost is found;
    When each shall have claimed his kin,
              Fear not they shall miss
              Mother's clasp, maiden's kiss –
    For no strange soil might hold them in.
When Te Deums seek the skies,
    When the Organ shakes the Dome,
              A dead man shall stand
              At each live man's hand –
    For they also have come home.

Joseph Lee

from Ballads of Battle (London: John Murray, 1916)
Poem reproduced by permission of the University of Dundee Archives

Tags:

remembrance World War I
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Joseph Lee1876 - 1949

Dundee-born Joseph Lee was a poet, journalist, artist and traveller, whose poems and sketches gave the world a glimpse of life in the trenches and prison camps of the First World War.
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