Time has drunken stealthily from my veins

They sold the key to the universe to people who didnt even know it was locked. 

 The arching sky is calling

Spacemen back to their trade.

All hands! Stand by! Free falling!

And the lights below us fade.

Out ride the sons of Terra,

Far drives the thundering jet,

Up leaps a race of Earthmen,

Out, far, and onward yet —

The stars that shine around us

Are torches on the road

The Black, extending outward,

Is with great peril sowed.

We embark on our adventure —

Return and count the losses worth

To see across the darkness

The cool, green hills of Earth.

We rot in the molds of Venus,

We retch at her tainted breath.

Foul are her flooded jungles,

Crawling with unclean death.

Let the sweet fresh breezes heal me

As they rove around the girth

Of our lovely mother planet

Of the cool, green hills of Earth.

The harsh bright soil of Luna,

Silent and dead as the grave,

Holds not the souls of Earthmen

Whose lives for Earth's they gave.

Across the seas of darkness

The good green Earth is bright —

Oh, Star that was my homeland

Shine down on me tonight.

The rust-red Martian deserts,

Her lonely wandering sands,

Are naught but lifeless visions

To who on her surface stands.

My heart turns home in longing

Across the voids between,

To know beyond the spaceways

The hills of Earth are green.

We, in the frozen nights of Titan,

Dream of Saturn's rainbow rings.

Yet in all our waking hours

It's the Earth alone that sings.

We've tried each spinning space mote

And reckoned its true worth:

Take us back again to the homes of men

On the cool, green hills of Earth.

We pray for one last landing

On the globe that gave us birth;

Let us rest our eyes on the fleecy skies

And the cool, green hills of Earth.