THE 12TH OF JULY

(Words: John Frazier [1804-1852], Music, Seàn Tyrrell)

Come pledge again your heart and your hand
One grasp that never will sever
Our password be our native land
Our motto «Love forever»
And let the Orange lily be
Your badge my patriot brother
The everlasting green for me
And we for one another

Behold how green the galant stem
On which the flower is blooming
How in one heavenly breeze and beam
Both flower and stem are glowing
The same good soil sustaining both
Makes both united flourish
But cannot give the orange growth
And cease the green to nourish.

The more that hand that plucks that flower
Will vainly strive to cherish
But in that our the stem blooms on
The flower it begins to perish
Regard them then of equal worth
While last their genial weather
The time's at hand when deep in earth
They will both sink together.

And even though it be in our country's cause
Our party feelings blended
'Til lasting peace from equal laws
On both will have descended
'Til the Orange lily be
Your badge my patriot brother
The everlasting green for me
And we for one another.

Sung by Seàn Tyrrell on «Cry of a dreamer» (1995)

John Frazier (1804-1852) A cabinet maker by trade, a poet by every instinct that poetry holds dear. He lies in an obscure corner of Glasnevin in an unmarked grave. Born a Presbyterian, he exhorts all his countrymen then and now to let the past bury it's dead and walk hand-in-hand into a loving future. In memory of Johnny Piggott and to the people of both communities in Belfast, but especially my long standing friends from the Shankill Rd. Seàn Tyrrell^^