| If you ever go across the sea to Ireland,
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| Then maybe at the closing of your day;
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| You will sit and watch the moonrise over Claddagh,
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| And see the sun go down on Galway Bay,
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| Just to hear again the ripple of the trout stream,
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| The women in the meadows making hay;
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| And to sit beside a turf fire in the cabin,
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| And watch the barefoot gossoons at their play,
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| For the breezes blowing o’er the seas from Ireland,
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| Are perfum’d by the heather as they blow;
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| And the women in the uplands diggin' praties,
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| Speak a language that the strangers do not know,
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| For the strangers came and tried to teach their way,]
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| They scorn’d us just for being what we are;
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| But they might as well go chasing after moonbeams,
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| Or light a penny candle from a star.
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| And if there is going to be a life hereafter,
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| And somehow I am sure there’s going to be;
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| I will ask my God to let me make my heaven,
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| In that dear land across the Irish sea. |