Long Lie The Rivers Songtext

Lyrics: Sean Sherrard

Based on the poem "September 1913", by W.B. Yeats

Long lie the rivers and green are the mountains

The hopes and the dreams of a nation so small

Land of the scholars, the saints and tomorrow

Oh land of my father recall



Was it for this that wild geese spread

The grey wing on every tide

For this that all that blood was shed
For this Edward Fitzgerald died

And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone

All the delirium of the brave

Romantic Ireland's dead and gone

It's with O'Leary in the grave



Long lie the rivers and green are the mountains

The hopes and the dreams of a nation so small

Land of the scholars, the saints and tomorrow

Oh land of my father recall



Yet should we turn the years again

And call those exiles, as they were

In all their loneliness and pain

You'd cry, some woman's yellow hair

Had maddened every mother's son

They weighed so lightly what they gave

But let them be, they're dead and gone

They're with O'Leary in the grave



Long lie the rivers and green are the mountains

The hopes and the dreams of a nation so small

Land of the scholars, the saints and tomorrow

Oh land of my father recall



Long lie the rivers and green are the mountains

The hopes and the dreams of a nation so small

Land of the scholars, the saints and tomorrow

Oh land of my father recall