Bella Mourns For A Departed Beauty Poem by Francis Duggan

When I was a school girl in Bayswater
The nearest house was a quarter of a mile away
Around our home were farms, gums and acacias
But Bayswater is a concrete place today.

My once green home is now a place of commerce
With factories and houses all around
You cannot hear the birds sing in the reserve
The passing traffic drowns out every sound.

I'm not that old I am not even seventy
The great changes that five decades can bring
Outside our country cottage every morning
On old gum tree gray butcherbird did sing.

Bayswater has changed beyond recognition
Nowadays the butcherbird there you won't hear
Where trees and paddocks were there's ugly buildings
When commerce comes beauty must disappear.

At the expense of Nature a few greedy men grew wealthier
Workmen bulldozed the farms and cut the tall gums down
And something of beauty was destroyed forever
To be replaced by a Suburban Town.

Where humans come to live Nature must suffer
A changing World is changed beyond repair
The towns growing with the growing human populations
And wild animals and wild birds becoming rare.

And Bella mourns for a departed beauty
And her memories give rise to silent tears
For the tall trees and the wild life and the paddocks
Of Bayswater of her happy childhood years.