The Lust Of The Wander Still In Me Poem by Francis Duggan

I could have stayed by those distant mountains where mine was a fairly well known face
And live a quiet life where old friends live far north of here in my Homeplace
But I had the wanderlust in me and the wanderlust took me away
To places far south of the Boggeragh mountains where I live and grow old and gray.

There I was what one would call reasonably happy and I am reasonably happy today
But the lust of the wander still in me though my old memories are in decay
Of the old woods fields, rivers and mountains that do not seem to age with time
That decades ago in the long gone Seasons inspired the long dead Bards to rhyme.

The brown wren's song so loud for a tiny bird I struggle now to memorize
And the old bracken hills of my boyhood I find harder to visualize
The wildflowers of Summer in the lush green meadows hosts to wild honeybees and white butterflies
And those snow hatted hills of the Winter are fading in my memory's eyes.

Yet the lust of the wander still in me and it will live in me till I die
And I yearn for places far distant far from where the masked lapwing cry
In the Town Parklands of Wonthaggi in mid Winter in chilly July
At night time one can hear them calling as above their breeding grounds they fly.

The nostalgia in me is dying and the old memories are in decay
But the lust of the wander still in me and in me till death it will stay
I have travelled far south of my Homeland and passed through landscapes brown and green
But I still yearn for exotic places for places that others have seen.

The lust of the wander still in me though I am now ageing and gray
And from my old Northern Homeland I live many air miles away
Compared to some I'm not well travelled and great adventures I don't have to recall
For despite what some people tell you it is not a small World after all.