On the first day of January, eighteen ninety-two,
They opened Ellis Island and they let the people through.
And the first to cross the threshold of that isle of hope and tears,
Was Annie Moore from Ireland who was all of fifteen years.
CHORUS:
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 pa**port when your old world disappears,
But there's no future in the past, when you're all of fifteen years,
[CHORUS]
When they closed down Ellis Island in nineteen forty-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 felt when you're only fifteen years.
[CHORUS X2]