Ireland

 

 There’s beauty in the rolling hills,

All shades of verdant green

Except where hay is freshly mown,

The only brown we’ve seen.

 

We sit and watch the rain fall

As you sing your sweet, sad song;

We’ve got several miles to walk;

We’d better get along.

 

The history of your fine land

Is filled with grief and stain,

The story of a suffering folk,

A memory of pain.

 

One year, the crops are failures,

And potatoes are black rot.

It’s hard to feed your children

If that is all you’ve got.

 

You take a ship across the sea;

So hard to say good-bye.

But, if you stay, you know that

You will watch the children die.

 

And, if that were not enough

To fill a life with woe,

There’s the struggle with the British,

And how to make them go.

 

Catholics versus Protestants,

It seems to me quite odd

How humankind can act that way

When worshipping one God

 

So of an early morning,

When mist gathers into rain,

We will don our waterproofs,

And thank the Lord again

 

That we have come to Ireland,

To remember what is good,

And leave the painful buried,

After learning what we should.