Green Hills of Earth

The Green Hills of Earth

Original words by Robert A. Heinlein, C.L. Morre and Henry Kuttner.Additional words by Chuck Rein. Some minor additions and editing by Victor Van der Sterren.

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
Whos 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.