He May Never Return Poem by Francis Duggan

He may never return to his old Homeplace again
And hear the birds sing in the wind and the rain
When the cool winds of Spring through the high country blow
And the hawthorns are dressed in their blooms white as snow.

But he climbs on the mountain when he visualize
And the little brown lark from the heather does rise
And singing with passion upwards he does fly
Till he disappears in the clouds of the sky.

A migrant in this Land he always may be
But in his flights of fancy he regularly see
The ditches and fields in their flowers of the Spring
When the nesting songbirds do whistle and sing.

In some people's lives destiny has the say
The lust of the wander it lured him away
From the places and people he loved years ago
Back there now perhaps not many he would know.

Fond memories of his old Homeplace he retain
He hears the stormwater gurgling in the roadside drain
And in His flights of fancy he can hear the rill
With the babbling tongue in the field by the hill.