Long Lie The Rivers Lyrics

Johnny Logan

Long Lie The Rivers

Music: Ralf-Rene Maue
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