Far from the home I love

I was watching "Fiddler On The Roof" the other day - one of my favourite musicals. It's directed by Canadian Norman Jewison.

There is a scene in it when the daughter, Hodel (played by Michele Marsh), and Tevye (played by Topol) are sitting at a lonely train stop, and Hodel is explaining to her father why she is leaving home to follow here love to Siberia, where he is serving a sentence for sedition.

In the song she sings, "Far from the home I love", I heard many an immigrant's story, who, like myself, left my home to follow the one I love. Here are the lyrics for you. Like the rest of the story, it's as beautiful as it is sad.

How can I hope to make you understand
Why I do, what I do,
Why I must travel to a distant land
Far from the home I love?

Once I was happily content to be
As I was, where I was
Close to the people who are close to me
Here in the home I love...

Who could see that a man would come
Who would change the shapes of my dreams?
Helpless, now, I stand with him
Watching older dreams grow dim.

Oh, what a melancholy choice this is,
Wanting home, wanting him,
Closing my heart to every hope but his, 
Leaving the home I love.

There were my heart has settled long ago
I must go, I must go.
Who could imagine I'd be wand'ring so
Far from the home I love?

Yet, there with my love, I'm home.