It Seems Like Only Yesterday Poem by Francis Duggan

The years go by too quickly and old age comes too soon
For it seems like only yesterday when I heard the angelus bell at noon
Ring in the church at Millstreet and on a storm free day
It's peals heard in the quiet fields up to a mile away.

It seems like only yesterday when I was a young boy
When first I saw the skylark a small speck in the sky
And singing ever singing as upwards he did fly
Such memories last a life time and such memories never die.

Above the slopes of Clara hill more than half a World away
All through the Spring and Summer his descendants sing today
The same song as the skylark that I heard sing years ago
And life goes on as usual where het and bracken grow.

The whip crack call of the whipbird a bird of mankind shy
And the kookaburra's laughter ring in the wood nearby
And the crimson rosellas chirping as they fly from tree to tree
I know them by their voices now familiar birds to me.

It seems like only yesterday when I heard the robin sing
On cypress tree by my old home in April in the Spring
And dunnock in the hedgerow chirped in the wind and rain
And of my boyhood close to Nature the memories with me remain.