Without Me Poem by Francis Duggan

Through lush and rushy fields where the cock pheasant crow
The Cails from Kippagh down to the Finnow flow
And in fancy i can hear the male robin sing
His voice to me does have a familiar ring.

Just memories they are now and little more
Of places I've lived in and walked in before
That brought me great joy in Seasons now long gone
But without me the rivers keep babbling on.

Old Clara in Winter wears his hat of snow
And without me Finnow to the Blackwater flow
And without me the dipper he sings in the rill
That babbles on down from the foot of the hill.

The Seasons they come and the Seasons they go
And without me the bracken on Clara's face grow
And the little lark carols in the Summer sky
But on looking back the years they just seemed to fly.

The song of the chaffinch i fancy i hear
And the wood that he sings in to me seems so near
And though the beauty i knew lives in my memory
Life in the old Townland goes on without me.