| |
| SHE lived beside the Anner, | |
| At the foot of Slievna-man, | |
| A gentle peasant girl, | |
| With mild eyes like the dawn; | |
| Her lips were dewy rosebuds; | 5 |
| her teeth of pearls rare; | |
| And a snow-drift ’neath a beechen bough | |
| Her neck and nut-brown hair. | |
| |
| How pleasant ’twas to meet her | |
| On Sunday, when the bell | 10 |
| Was filling with its mellow tones | |
| Lone wood and grassy dell | |
| And when at eve young maidens | |
| Strayed the river bank along, | |
| The widow’s brown-haired daughter | 15 |
| Was loveliest of the throng. | |
| |
| O brave, brave Irish girls— | |
| We well may call you brave!— | |
| Sure the least of all your perils | |
| Is the stormy ocean wave, | 20 |
| When you leave our quiet valleys, | |
| And cross the Atlantic’s foam, | |
| To hoard your hard-won earnings | |
| For the helpless ones at home. | |
| |
| “Write word to my own dear mother— | 25 |
| Say, we’ll meet with God above; | |
| And tell my little brothers | |
| I send them all my love; | |
| May the angels ever guard them, | |
| Is their dying sister’s prayer”— | 30 |
| And folded in a letter | |
| Was a braid of nut-brown hair. | |
| |
| Ah, cold and well-nigh callous, | |
| This weary heart has grown | |
| For thy helpless fate, dear Ireland, | 35 |
| And for sorrows of my own; | |
| Yet a tear my eye will moister, | |
| When by Anner side I stray, | |
| For the lily of the mountain foot | |
| That withered far away. | 40 |
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