Digital Tradition Mirror

Father in Exile

Father in Exile
(James Connolly)

'Tis Christmas Day in Ireland
And I'm sitting here alone
Three thousand miles of ocean intervene
And the faces of my loved ones
In my little Irish home
Come glancing in and out my thoughts between
O, to catch the loving kisses
From my little children flung
To feel the warm embrace when wife
And husband meet
To hear the boisterous greeting in
The kindly Dublin tongue
That makes brightness of the dullness
Of our murky Dublin streets.

'Tis Christmas day in Ireland
And I my lot bewailing
Am fretting in this Western land so cold
Where the throbbings of the human heart
Are weak and unavailing
And human souls are reckoned less than gold
O the headache and the heartache
And the ashes at the feast
Attend us every hour of our sojourn
In this land
Till the heart-sick Irish exile turns
His face towards the East
To that land where love and poverty
Can wander hand in hand.

'Tis Christmas day in Ireland
And ringing over yonder
Are Dublin streets with Irish love of life
And I'm here in exile moping
In spirit yearning wander
To that Irish land to meet my Irish wife
O the lovings and the strivings and the
Griefs we share in common
And the babes that came to bless us
As sweet buds upon a tree
O curses on the cruel fate that sent
A father roaming
And blessings still this Christmastide
My Irish home on thee.

[Written in the U.S., Christmas, 1903.]
XX
July01

Thanks to Mudcat for the Digital Tradition!