"But not "into the arms of my dear love/lass" when he's going away from her. And a stumble that would delay his journey would be all to the good if he's on his way back to hell. So the first verse doesn't fit at the end unless you change some words."

I'm happy with imperfection and inconsistencies and things that don't fit: there's already plenty of that in the song! It starts being sung in the first person - "I" - but then changes to the third person – "he", "she". It also changes tense. It leaps from one person's mouth to an overall God's-eye-view the way a trippy movie does. It also has a couplet that rhymes "day" with, er, "day".

If you're not happy with the idea of that verse signifiying a return journey to the afterlife, then all you have to do is not think of it that way. Think of it as the rambling song of an addled, wandering spirit. Or think of it as being sung by me, the actual singer, declaring my own intent to go home to my missus. Or just think of it as a repeated verse in a song that doesn't actually have a stable narrator anyway.