Isle Of Hope, Isle Of Tears

Brendan Graham

On the first day on January
Eighteen ninety-two
They opened Ellis Island
And they let the people through
And the first to cross the treshold
Of that isle of hope and tears
Was Annie Moore from Ireland
Who was all of fifteen years

Isle of hope, isle of tears
Isle of freedom, isle of fears
But it’s not the isle you 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 a 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
But there’s no future in the past
When you’re fifteen years

When they closed down Ellis Island
In nineteen fourty-three
Seventeen million people
Had come there for sanctuary
And in Springtime when I came here
And I stepped onto its piers
I thought of how it must have been
When you were fifteen years

Ellis Island is an island located in Upper New York Bay in the Port of New York and New Jersey, United States. It was the gateway for millions of immigrants to the United States as the nation’s busiest immigrant inspection station from 1892 until 1954.