Are you still there aflowing
With Connaught blackwater you drain,
That I loved so much agrowing
My Clare I won’t see again.
On your banks often went rambling
‘Twas mostly daydreaming in truth,
Escaping during my wandering
With a mind of untroubled youth.
Often I sigh for times gone by,
Of the things you meant to me,
And over the wide world would fly
To the Danube, Rhine and Yangtze.
Once in a while you’d be the Nile
Winding its way to the sea,
When a child myself I’d beguile
That you were also the Mississippi.
By the great Nile I once served awhile
In an oven known as Khartoum,
With good lads of rank and file
Wishing I was in Cahernahoon.
And held the line of dear father Rhine
That Romans did long before,
Drinking glasses of German wine
Yet pining for the bridge of Cregmore.
The Danube isn’t blue to behold
As through the Balkans it sweeps,
Oh I’d prefer to be dressed in old clothes
At Corbally washing the sheep!
Learning to swim in your water,
Hawthorn bushes my changing room,
Useful on the beach of Gibraltar
While secretly wishing ‘twas Tuam!
We will meet once again river Clare,
When my time in this world passes,
My soul to some place elsewhere
But your water will get my ashes!
May the wild wind be my dead march,
And lapping water the very last song,
Drifting under that old bridge’s arch—
On your blackwater borne along.
