The lazy Lagan lingers through the fields of County Down,

where it slithers through Dromara and Dromore;

from the foothills of Slieve Croob through the countryside and towns,

and meandering through Belfast to the shore.

 

It’s not like the Niagara with its thunderous waterfalls,

nor the Nile that flows for many thousand miles.

It’s a sleepy little river, and yet to me it calls,

from wherever I may bide throughout these isles.

 

Reminding me of blackberries that grew along its banks,

and stained my tongue and fingers as a child,

when we straggled back from school along the path there by its flanks,

as the summer sun looked down on us and smiled.

 

There were sticklebacks to catch in the shallows of its flow,

and mud to plodge through at the water’s edge;

there were ducks upon the water, with their ducklings in a row,

as they swam in their flotillas till they’d fledge.

 

Those days are far behind me now, and yet they’re always there,

like the river, through my memories they wind,

where the days were always sunny, and the weather ever fair,

and the lazy Lagan lingers in my mind.