| lyric | I have travelled many lands,
and I still can’t understand,
How sad you have become on my return
Your poor heart ist filled with care,
sad and old they left you there,
Your once bright eyes with sorrow softly burn,
I can even sense the change
in the sound of children’s games,
Childhood tears and youth’s ambition
have all turned to dobt and fear,
It’s an age of youth Im told,
yet I’ve never felt so old.
As I recall old Dublin in my tears.
All the faces that I meet as I roam each one-way street
Reflect the empty statement of the times,
And the old cathedral bell can't be heard above the swell
For the years erased the message in her chimes.
All my childhood friends are gone like the streets where we were born
But the time that it has taken doesn‘t seem so many years,
They have faded in the gloom with 'Sap' Kelly of the Coombe,
Just the ghost of dear old Dublin in my tears.
There were times when jobs were few, there were hungry days we knew,
Some days so bad their memory I've cursed,
As a prayer I said to God, there on board the 'Princess Maud'
That our children would restore a pride we lost,
But the past they all forsake as they're dancing at your wake
While the heart of Dublin's dying, but nobody really cares,
And the fools as they pass by, laugh to see an old man cry
But I can't forget old Dublin in my tears.
So, gather 'round good friends and true, ‘though our numbers they be few
We'll drink one toast before I cross the foam,
Soon in London's dark domain, I’ll recall how I became
No more stranger there than here at home.
Now the Liffey flows along as I listen for her song
And the voice of Big Jim Larkin seems to echo in my cars,
But it's just the rafter's ring, to her requiem I'll sing:
Farewell to dear old Dublin in my tears.
Yes, farewell to dear old Dublin in my tears |