THE SMELL OF BURNING HEATHER IN THE SPRING

When the winter days are over, and the long dark nights are gone

                When you feel the tang of Spring is in the air,

When Nature, scene to quiver, as it greets the Season’s dawn

                And life has been reborn everywhere

Then visions come a thronging of a land across the foam,

                And my thoughts are flitting back on memory’s wing

Then my heart is filled with longing, for my Irish mountain home

                And the Smell of Burning Heather in the Spring.

When I see a coal fire burning, then I long for Irish turf

                For a hearthstone and the memories it can bring

And I’m ever, ever yearning for a land across the surf

                And the Smell of Burning heather in the Spring.

Comes the glory of the Summer, bringing beauty in it’s train

                The beauty that a child can love and know.

The hedgerows are a-shimmer as the flowers bloom again

                And you heart is filled with dreams of long ago

To some the rose is sweeter than the woodbine’s scented breath

                While others to the dainty violet cling,

To me there’s nothing greater than the scent of blazing heath

                The Smell of Burning Heather in the Spring.

Then will Autumn overtake us, when the flowers are no more

                And you and I are also fading fast.

The joys of youth forsake us but the happy days of yore

                Have left us still our memories of the past

And I’m longing for my Sireland, fairest land that I have known

With one found hope, to which I’ll always cling

To rest at last in Ireland, mid the mountains of Tyrone

                And the Smell of Burning Heather in the Spring.