River Suir Song

The Song of the Suir

by L. M. McCraith
(Possibly written and published around 1912)

The Song of the Suir
If you hear the river scene in youth’s sweet spring,
When primrose gold is all you seek, the primrose gold that fairies fling,
In this Old Land, the Ever Young, hear when the fresh cheek flushes –
The ripple of the river through the rushes.

You can hear it at high noon in sunny June,
While swallows skim, and salmon leap, or underneath the lover’s moon,
When you picture loved one’s blushes, and hear through songs of thrushes –
The ripple of the river through the rushes.

You may hear it in the fall recalling all –
Old scenes, old friends, old ways, old days, old hopes come back at its soft call,
Just an echo! Yet the yearning for it sweets the heart in gushes –
The ripple of the river through the rushes.

You shall hear it through the cold when you are old,
Though storm and stress and winter frost and chill that comes from greed of gold.
Shall hear, who heard it long ago, till death your heaving hushes –
The ripple of the river through the rushes.

END