Francis Duggan Poems

I hear the bellbirds in the wood on the hill
And magpie he opened his silvery bill
And he fluted his wild and his beautiful air
As a Nature songster few with him to compare.
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Back there in old Duhallow the Summer nears her close
And the browness of Nature's decay on the petals of the rose
And the big bird song of the tiny brown wren echoes in the hedgerow
In the quietness of the morning where the old Blackwater flow
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In central Victoria they badly need rain
The water reservoirs almost empty in Bendigo and Castlemaine
Little rainfall in August and less in July
And in Daylesford and Maryborough many water dams dry,
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A penniless fellow yet he laugh and he sing
But wealth some will tell you is a relative thing
He laughs at the World one not fettered by stress
And what happens tomorrow he could not care less
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As near to an Earthly Utopia as one could wish to see
Those rugged old mountains pre-date history
To the very first Aussies strong links it can trace
Dunkeld in the Grampians is a beautiful place.
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I have mental pictures of the stress in his handsome young face
But now he's at rest in a far quieter place
He was a good person as i can recall
Though his mental condition led to his downfall,
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On Clara's slopes in mid July i ate the whortleberry
And the splendid views i do recall towards the hills of East Kerry
The whortleberry small blue fruits that ripened on the heather
From late June until late July in changeable Summer weather.
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The wanderlust is in me yet i yearn for distant places
I do grow tired of the one place and it's familiar faces
And perhaps they feel the same of me and happy to see me leaving
At my departure it would seem there will not be any grieving.
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Men are cruel to all living things such as poultry, dogs, sheep and cattle
And men do shoot to kill at their own kind for to prove themselves in battle
And though i should not be the one to talk since i am a meat eater
I do not own a fire-arm or i am not a wife beater.
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It has been awhile now seems like ages ago
Since i last heard the familiar caw of the gray crow
The home to me then may be home never more
As i live far away from Hibernia's shore,
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