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On the first day of January, eighteen ninety-two,
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they opened Ellis Island and they let the people through.
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And the first to cross the threshold, of that isle of hope and tears,
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was Annie Moore from Ireland, who was all of fifteen years.
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Isle of hope, isle of tears, isle of freedom, isle of fears,
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but it's not the isle you left behind.
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That isle of hunger, isle of pain, isle you'll never see again,
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but the isle of home is always on your mind.
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In a little bag she carried, all her past and history,
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and her dreams for the future, in the land of liberty.
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And courage is the passport, when your old world disappears,
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but there's no future in the past, when you're all of fifteen years.
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When they closed down Ellis Island, in 1943,
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seventeen million people had come there for sanctuary.
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And in Springtime when I came here, and I stepped onto itâ??s piers,
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I thought of how it must have hurt, when you're only fifteen years.