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Home at Last

Posted by Smokey Stover on December 31, 2006

In Reply to: Home at Last posted by ESC on December 30, 2006

: : : For as long as I remember my Father always would receite this phrase everytime we would arrive home after being gone on a trip or for any extended period of time. "Home at Last Presents a Picture Dark and Dreary Like a Tomb" My Dad always told us that there was more to this phrase, poem/play etc. He said it could have been from a Shakespear play or an Edger Allen Poe poem or a Dickens book. (He was not sure where it came from and he was not sure if he was quoting it exactly. I would appreciate any help finding out where this phrase could have come from. My family have all tried to find out the origin of this phrase with out any luck. Again, my Father could have quoted it wrong also.

: : : Thank you for any help.....

: : I could be wrong, but I think your father was misquoting the first line of a celebrated set of parody words sung to the tune of "Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles" (which tune is also used for the hymn "Glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion, city of our God!"). As with all popular parodies, no doubt there are many variants, but the version I grew up with goes as follows:
: : Life presents a dismal picture,
: : Dark and dreary as a tomb;
: : Father's got urinal stricture,
: : Mother's got a fallen womb;
: : Uncle Jim has been deported
: : For a homosexual crime;
: : And the maid has just aborted
: : For the forty-second time. (VSD)

: Bum me out, why don't you.

Just a footnote. The tune was also used for the Austrian anthem with the words, Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser...
It's no longer sung in Austria, so far as I know, Franz being dead.
SS

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