Nelly Fay Poem by Francis Duggan

You may feel it as your duty to go to church on sunday
And to the God your church embrace you well may kneel and pray
And you may feel that God is near you don't tell that to Nelly Fay
For she will only tell you God from her lives far away.

And she will ask you where was God on the day my Annie died?
Her little angel found in the scrub twenty yards off the roadside
Preyed on by a human predator on her way home from school
If there's a God at all she says then God has to be cruel.

For to allow such a thing to happen to an innocent ten year old
Your God you says who loves us all in some ways must be cold
My only child taken from me her remains left by roadside
I had great hopes and dreams for her but my hopes and dreams destroyed.

Those who don't know of her sorrows and all she has been through
Say she seems surly and withdrawn not one to impress you
But had they known of her heartbreak brought about by tragedy
They would see a different Nelly and they would judge her differently.

Till her blue eyed golden haired daughter fell victim of foul play
She was a devout church goer grief torn Nelly Fay
But she no longer go to church on sunday for to pray
And she says if there's a God at all that from her he's far away.