What Is This Life Poem by Francis Duggan

What is this life but a brief spell in the great sands of time
We quickly grow to adulthood and fleeting is our life prime
In three score and ten years we are old ours not a lengthy span
Each year from there a bonus for any woman or man.

You hear some say he or she made their mark in other words they knew success
They were successful as we see it still they died none the less
Their millions will not bring them back to the dead what use wealth and fame
When the paupers and the millionaires in death are all the same?

What is this life I ask myself what does life mean at all
The last fifty years they went so fast when I look back I recall
When first I heard a skylark sing o'er a bogland far away
It does not seem that long ago seems more like yesterday?

What is this life but a fleeting span we soon grow old and die?
The World's so called most powerful people are no different to I
The Reaper too will claim them more time they cannot buy
And it seems like only yesterday when I was a young boy.