Collection of Irish Song Lyrics
Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears
On the first day of January Eighteen Ninety-two
They Opened Ellis Island And they let the people through.
And the first to cross the threshold
Of the Isle of hope and tears
Was Annie Moore from Ireland
Who was all of fifteen years.
CHORUS Isle of hope, Isle of tears,
Isle of freedom, Isle of fears,
But it's not the Isle I left behind...
That Isle of hunger, Isle of pain,
Isle you'll never see again
But the Isle of home Is always on your mind.
In her little bag she carried
All her past and history
And her dreams for the future In the land of liberty.
And courage is the passport
When your old world disappears
âCause there's no future in the past
When you're fifteen years.
CHORUS
When they closed down Ellis Island
In Nineteen Forty-three
Seventeen million people Had come there for sanctuary.
And in springtime when I came here
And stepped onto its piers,
I thought of how it must have been
When you're only fifteen years.
CHORUS
