Dying Exile’s Return, The

Paler  and  thinner  the  morning  moon  grew, 
Colder  and  sterner  the  rising  wind  blew — 
The  pole  star  had  set  in  a  forest  of  cloud, 
And  the  icicles  crackled  on  spar  and  on  shroud, 
When  a  voice  from  below we feebly heard  cry, 
"Let me see, let me  see my own land ere I die. 

"Ah, dear sailor, say, have we sighted Cape Clear? 
Can you see any sign ? Is the morning light near? 
You are young, my brave boy; thanks, thanks, for your hand, 
Help me up, till I get a last glimpse of the land 
Thank God, 'tis the sun that now reddens the sky, 
I shall see, I shall see my own Land ere I die.

"Let me lean on your strength, I am feeble and old, 
And one-half of my heart is already stone cold 
Forty years work a change! when I first crossed the sea 
There were few on the deck that could grapple with me; 
But my prime and my youth in Ohio went by 
And I'm come back to see the old spot ere I die."

"Twas a feeble old man, and he stood on the deck, 
His arm round a kindly young mariner's neck,
His ghastly gaze fixed on the tints of the east, 
As a starveling might stare at the sound of a feast; 
The morn quickly rose, and revealed to his eye 
The Land he had prayed to behold, and then die!

Green, green was the shore, though the year was near done 
High and haughty the capes the white surf dashed upon
A gray ruined convent was down by the strand, 
And the sheep fed afar, on the hills of the land! 
"God be with you, dear Ireland," he gasped with a sigh, 
I have lived to behold you, I'm ready to die."

He sunk by the hour, and his pulse 'gan to fail, 
As we swept by the headland of storied Kinsale; 
Off Ardigna Bay it came slower and slower, 
And his corpse was  clay-cold as we sighted Tramore; 
At Passage we waked him, and now he doth lie 
In the lap of the land he beheld but to die. 

In the early 20th century Felix McGlennon was one of the most prolific and successful writers and publishers of vaudeville and Music Hall songs. He wrote many songs in praise of the British Empire, but was also an Irish nationalist. In the mid-1900s began to publish a number of songs, initially under the heading McGlennon’s Library of Irish Music, aiming “to popularise amongst the masses many famous Irish poems not hitherto set to music” (Roscommon Messenger, 3 Feb 1906). This is an example: a setting of a mid-nineteenth century poem by Irish Canadian Thomas D’Arcy McGee.

Between 1900 and 1945 McGlennon’s company published numerous cheap collections of Irish songs which sold widely in Ireland and throughout the English-speaking world and these seem to have significantly influenced the repertoire of later traditional singers.