When This Fair Land Was Young

We measure years differently

How young can be a measure of maturity

Experience amassed from time spent

Navigated terrains and obstacles you’d circumvent

Then how do we measure the age of land

How can we determine the course of time’s hand

Islands were here long before you or me

Surviving the rigors of Mother Nature’s tyranny

Furious seas on their shores beating the rocks back

And winds and rains had their inlands under attack

It’s hard to determine when this fair land was young

Resting in the Caribbean Sea before its trees had sprung

Life for the island didn’t begin

At 1605 with the Portuguese or 1625 when the British came in

No, by the time they came there were adult trees

Densely growing over the island and generations of families

We chose to mark that time as the island’s birth

A time when we started to monitor the island’s real worth

Settlers therefore started the clock

Year after year they kept our island’s stock

Our island when it was young was covered in trees

Unlike today now with the many concrete communities

Nationals sing of old days from whence our pride had sprung

Glory days from When This Fair Land Was Young