Home Sweet Home - Original Song Lyrics

These are the lyrics from John Howard Payne c1823.

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Words by John Howard Payne, music by Henry Rowley Bishop.
Home Sweet Home

Mid Pleasures and palaces though I may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home;
A charm from the sky seems to hallow us there,
Which, seek thro' the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere. Home.

     Home!  Sweet, sweet home!
     There's no place like home.
     There's no place like home.

An exile from home, spendor dazzles in vain,
Oh, give me my lowly thatched cottage again;
The birds singing gaily, that come at my call;
Give me them, with that peace of mind, dearer than all.

     CHORUS

To thee, I'll return, overburdened with care,
The heart's dearest solace will smile on me there.
No more from that cottage again will I roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.
It is thought that the  home that Payne wrote of was a little cottage in East
Hampton, Long Island.  The song was first heard in London in his
play "Clari" in 1823.  The air had appeared in an early
collection of Bishop's as a Sicilian tune.  The theme of the song
and the beauty of the melody have given it world-wide fame.
The full "Clari" version of the lyrics are HERE.

You can hear a sung versions on this link:
Home, Sweet Home sung by Caroline Mosely
Digitized by Adam Soroka, Johnny Lee & Lisa Gottschalk
at the Digital Media Center, lemons Library, Univ. of Virginia

And here for a piano arrangement of the tune(mp3):
Home, Sweet Home -piano arrangement

Download song lyrics in PDF format
(For printing etc)