A Rhyme Of Innocence Poem by Francis Duggan

I believed there was a heaven beyond the sky
Where all good souls go to on the day they die
And that hell was for those who murder, cheat and lie
But that was years back when I was a young boy.

Of the Goddess of Nature I never was told
Though her splendid beauty I loved to behold
And though green Mother Nature was all around me
The God I then believed in I never did see.

The tiny brown wren who had the big bird song
In Spring on the hedgerow he sang all day long
I once saw his ten brown and tiny fledgelings hop by the hedgerow
In the sunshine of May half a century ago.

In the grove by my old home I heard the birds sing
And I marvelled at Nature this wonderful thing
The thrush carried moss for her nest in her beak
But of the Goddess of Nature none ever did speak.

They told me of their God they never had seen
And to the ways of the World back then I was green
You pray to your God and to him remain true
And to his great kingdom he will welcome you.

The God I then believed in I never did see
Whilst the Goddess of Nature was all around me
And still they believe in their God in the sky
Who welcomes the good soul when the body die.