“All the world is sad and dreary,
Everywhere I roam.”
Stephen Foster (1826–1864) American songwriter
As quoted at Family Book of Best Loved Poems, by David L. George, (1952)
Old Folks at Home
Phantastes (1858)
Context: Thou goest thine, and I go mine —
Many ways we wend;
Many days, and many ways,
Ending in one end.
Many a wrong, and its curing song;
Many a road, and many an inn;
Room to roam, but only one home
For all the world to win.
“All the world is sad and dreary,
Everywhere I roam.”
Stephen Foster (1826–1864) American songwriter
As quoted at Family Book of Best Loved Poems, by David L. George, (1952)
Old Folks at Home
“Ever let the Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home.”
William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist
Actually the opening lines of Keats's "Fancy" (1820).
Misattributed
“Ever let the Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home.”
John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet
"Fancy", l. 1
Poems (1820)
Wole Soyinka Death and the King's Horseman
Death and the King's Horseman (1975); cited from Six Plays (London: Methuen, 1984) p. 189.
“Type of the wise who soar, but never roam;
True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!”
William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet
To a Skylark, st. 2 (1825).
“Such is the patriot's boast, where'er we roam,
His first, best country ever is, at home.”
Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) Irish physician and writer
Source: The Traveller (1764), Line 73.
“Sadly I roam,
Still longing for de old plantation,
And for de old folks at home.”
Stephen Foster (1826–1864) American songwriter
Old Folks at Home
“How much a dunce that has been sent to roam
Excels a dunce that has been kept at home!”
William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist
Source: The Progress of Error (1782), Line 415.
Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist
Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, The Crystal City (2003), Chapter 4 “La Tia” (p. 74).