American Old Time Song Lyrics: 12 Where Can The Wanderer Be

Theater, Music-Hall, Nostalgic, Irish & Historic Old Songs, Volume 12

Where Can the Wanderer Be?
Copyright, 1886, by T. B. Harms & Co.

There's a gray-hair'd old woman who mourns for her boy,
Who left both his kindred and home;
In Ireland he couldn't get on, so he sailed
For a land far away o'er the foam.
When the boys and girls gather 'round by the Are,
And the song and the music are heard,
The mother still misses her son from his place,
And prays for her wandering boy.

Chorus.
Say, will he ever return?
Where can the wanderer be?
Oh, how my heart seems to yearn,
My boy only once more to see;
If my prayers and my tears
Could reach him on some foreign shore,
Then would my boy, my hope and my joy,
Come, back to the nest once more.

Tho' her eyes have grown dim, but they brighten with joy
When the knock of the postman is heard;
She thinks it's a letter from over the sea,
But, no! not a line or a word.
She says that her boy will be sure to come back.
When the swallows return in Spring,
And she thinks that once more, she will have him beneath
The sheltering folds of her wing.-Chorus.

His books are unopened, each relic untouched,
His portrait is still in its place;
For hours she will gaze thro' the mist of her tears,
At her own darling wanderer's face.
Ah! how dare we tell her, her loved one is dead.
For she'll meet him some day on that shore.
Where meeting can give inexpressible joy,
And parting can come nevermore.-Chorus.