Old Ireland shall Blossom again

AIR—“The valley lay smiling before me.”

I.
Through Wicklow's green glens and wild
         mountains
    I roved at the fall of the year,
When the wildflower droops by the fountains,
    And the leaves of the woodland are sere;
When garden and green field no longer
    Yield sweets to the wandering bee,
And the cloud-mantled streamlets meander
    Through flowerless plains to the sea.

II.
As I mused upon Ireland's dark story,
    'Mong homesteads and altars despoiled,
Through the ruined walls, weed-grown and
        hoary,
    The wind sang its requiem wild;
But there rose from the heart of its wailing
    This low-chanted, cheerful refrain,
Over all its wild sadness prevailing,
    “Old Ireland shall blossom again!”

III.
Still wand'ring on, pensive and dreary,
    Beneath the sad yew-tree's dark shade,
Through the lone ground where, hopeless and
         weary,
    The sons of the Green Isle were laid;
In the twilight a small bird came winging
    O'er the graves of the famished and slain,
And I heard the sweet strain in his singing,
    “Old Ireland shall blossom again!”

IV.
Then I lingered around a lone shieling,
    A poor peasant's sorrowful nest,
Where in hunger and heart-stricken feeling
    He gathered his brood to his breast;
And I heard as mild evening's soft vesper
    Died out on the shelterless glen,
From the wild thatch, a sweet floweret whisper,
    “Old Ireland shall blossom again!”

V.
Thus musing on Erin's sad story,
    As twilight sank down on the lea,
While murmurs of long-faded glory
    Came plaintively up from the sea,
I saw, in the daylight's declining,
    The bright stars of hope light the main;
And the sweet song stole down in their shining,
    “Old Ireland shall blossom again!”

VI.
Now the bright sun of justice is rising
    In splendour beyond the wide sea;
And Old Ireland, her foemen despising,
    At last shall be friendly and free:
She shall rise from her bondage and sorrow;
    From her long night of famine and pain,
She shall wake to another glad morrow,
    And blossom in beauty again!