In That Country Far Away

In the damp and rushy old fields the shy cock pheasants crow
And brown trout for flies are jumping in pools where the Finnow flow
And the hawthorns look resplendent in their white blooms of the May
And spring has brought her beauty to my homeland far away.

Above the old brown bogland a small speck in the sky
The skylark he is carolling as up and up he fly
And upward he keep singing till from view he disappear
One cannot see the songster but his song one still can hear.

The bug known as nostalgia now doesn't reduce me to tears
For I have not seen Erin's shore for more than sixteen years
Perhaps I'd be a stranger now in the old town by the hill
But life there goes on without me and flowers bloom by the rill.

Perhaps I'd feel like a stranger now in Millstreet Town today
For I have grown much older and the years have left me gray
And the mentors of my boyhood years for others have made way
In the cemetery by Cashman's Hill their bones forever lay.

The past is gone forever but the memories still remain
And the old fields by the river in my dreams I walk again
And the finches and the thrushes are whistling on the trees
And the warmth of the May time is in the freshening breeze.

In the damp and rushy old fields in the starlit night sky
The male snipe with his wings and tail make strange sounds as he fly
And the meadows and the hedgerows scent of the blooms of May
In the places of my boyhood in that country far away.