A Song In Exile (1910)
Oh, they that leave their fathers land, new friends and homes to find them.They turn their faces to the sea, but leave their hearts behind them.
Their hearts lie buried in the fields, along the blackthorn hedges,
Beside the brooks where rushes cool crowd close about the edges.
They're rooted in the holy soil, the green soil of the Ireland.
Who turn their faces to the West must leave their hearts in Ireland. The West is wide and rich and free, a grand land--but a cold, land.
I hunger for the warmth of lore that's found but in the old land.
I hunger for the linnet's song across the sunlit spaces.
I want the sights and sounds of home, the dear familiar faces.
A twilight how the heart stirs-when the Angelus is calling.
And on the misty Irish fields the silver dew is falling ! Asthore machree ! The sea's between, and foreign skies are o'er me.
But in the night I feel my heart throb in the land that bore me.
I feel it beating strong beneath the shamrocks and the mosses.
It clings about my people's bones beneath the Irish crosses.
It calls and calls across the sea, to come home to the sireland,
The haunted hills, the singing winds, the smilng skies of Ireland. -Marie Conway Oemler, in the "Outlook." Notes From the NSW Newspaper The Evening News 8 Jan 1910 p. 14.