The Voices Come To Me From Long Ago Poem by Francis Duggan

The voices come to me from long ago
Of Nature's children that I used to know
I hear them sing on hedge and tree and bush
The robin and the blackbird and the thrush.

From April on the fields are lush and green
And wild flowers in their billions to be seen
And lambs bleat in the field beside the hill
And the dipper he is singing in the rill.

The redwings have gone home to far away
And the hawthorns cloaked in their white flowers of May
And chaffinch pipes his happy notes to Spring
And swallows o'er the meadows fly and sing.

The curlew o'er the bogland flies around
And he flutes his finest o'er his breeding ground
He and his mate in the bog raise their family
And then fly off to their home by the sea.

At times far off and at other times quite near
The cuckoo's voice sweet music to the ear
Her egg in nest of smaller bird she lay
The only part in motherhood she play

And late at evening when darkness cloaks the sky
The shy male snipe above the bogland fly
And with his wings and tail he makes a goat like sound
As through the night he flies around and round.

The voices come to me from long ago
Of Nature's children that I used to know
When Spring arrived and she shook her emerald gown
And she spread her green in the fields near Millstreet Town.