Francis Duggan Song Poems

In Northern streams and rivers in the Spring of the year
The song of the dipper rural people hear
Above the sound of the rapid waters babbling along
One cannot mistake his unmistakeable song.
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To song and to music people dance along
And life all the better for music and song
When the musicians play and the singers do sing
Great joy to so many they always do bring
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Introduced to Melbourne where they do seem rare
The thrush that was made famous by John Clare
In his famed poem known as The Thrush's Nest
About the brown bird with the brown spots on his grey breast.
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The blackbird's song it takes me far away
To northern Land and to a distant day
His kin birds sang all day until sundown
In leafy groves just out of Millstreet Town.
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On the slopes of the hill as dawn's lamp lights the sky
The little brown lark from the bracken does fly
A thing of great beauty so pleasant to hear
His distinctive carolling melodious and clear
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The twittering song that the Goldfinch does sing
Awakens the memories of a far away Spring
When the hawthorns were in their white blooms of the May
And the wild born birds sung at the dawn of the day
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They should not have a Nationality on them to all people they should belong
Those three wonderful gifts of humankind known as music and dancing and song
They do not belong to any one Nation at least that's how it does seem to me
Though many Nationalists hold such things precious and with my thinking would not agree.
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Without song and dance and music how boring life would be
From the cares of life these three can set the heart free
The music inspires people to dance and song
And you with the sad face you can sing along,
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Whilst his mate she sits on her eggs in her nest
I fancy I hear and I see him the sun on his red-breast
He singing upon the leafy silver birch tree
Proclaiming the borders of his territory.
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Oh sing me of Nature's great beauty of sunlight on flowering gum trees
And the sweet scents of Nature's own perfume that wafts in the freshening breeze
And sing of the wildborn creatures the call of the boobook owl at night
And the wild cry of the brushtail possum on the blackwood tree in the moonlight,
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Oh sing me a song of the clear mountain rill
That babbles downland from the foot of the hill
By many a hedgerow and many a tree
For to join the big river that flows to the sea.
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I hear him early in the morning sometimes even before daybreak
Before dawn's light shines in the window he tells his neighbours I'm awake
On the banksias and the wattles seems more like a call than a song
Sounds like that he has laryngitis or with his vocal chords something wrong.
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The grey shrike thrush has sung his final song
He lay on forest floor neath fallen leaves
And mother nature who gives life and then take
For her dead children never seems to grieve.
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It's time for us to celebrate the birth of a New Year
And we will drink, be merry and have good fun and cheer
And we will sing Rob Burns song 'For Sake Of Auld Lang Syne'
And give John another glass of beer and Kate a glass of wine.
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My love came to me in the twilight hour
And in her hand she held a fresh plucked flower
'Sighing' this I brought as parting gift for you
From green woodland a wild born bluebell blue
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To an old school of literature he did belong
Duhallow's last legend of poetry and song
With words he was one who surely had a way
Some of his songs and poems are sung and recited today
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Though moody winds of March blow down the hill
And the air still has the touch of Winter's chill
The year's first flowers their brilliant hues display
And sun shine days cannot be far away.
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I was not born and raised where I live now and I see myself as an outsider
But I'm not the parochial type and my horizons are wider
My Homeland many miles away but perhaps I won't be returning
To my boyhood haunts for to grow old I have lost all the yearning.
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Her children were my friends when I was young boy
More than forty years ago how time does fly
And now I dedicate this simple song
To the memory of Jer's wife Mary Long.
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She said you may not be a poet but your songs might suit a balladeer
To sing in lounge room of a pub whilst drinkers enjoy their beer
For your's is fairly earthy stuff and not hard to understand
But like I say a high place in literature you never will command.
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I never had the notion that I might be a poet
But of Duhallow countryside in slip shod rhyme I've wrote
And I have heard the skylark pipe in the Summer sky
Above the rushy meadows of green old Lisnaboy.
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I come from Land of bracken hills and green meads fringed by hedges
And I am still a mountain man and rough around the edges
And now I live in Sherbrooke Shire in the Dandenong Ranges
From Bracken hills to gum tree hills the scenery so changes.
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Hard enough prison confinement without the bitter memory
Of my long dead murdered father like a spectre haunting me
Every night I dream about him here in my gloomy prison cell
I'd be best off dead and buried and suffering with the damned in hell.
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The hill I once lived near is far away back there in old Duhallow
But where ever to where the Hillman go the mountains seem to follow
The skylark from the bracken rise and upwards he goes winging
And o'er the slopes of Clara hill I still can hear him singing.
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Were I a nature lyric poet my special gifts I'd share
With all who'd care to read my verse people from everywhere
But I don't have the gift of verse or so 'twould seem to me
So I can't share what I don't have with all humanity.
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The home of Irish culture an old man once told me
How Eoghain Ruaidh O Suilleabhain died at Knocknagree
He was a major Gaelic poet the literary critics say
And the legend of the great Eoghain Ruaidh is living still today
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The song of the bullfinch I fancy I hear
He sings in the grove to my thoughts ever near
Not the finest songster of the northern Spring
But who can mistake him for the quiet song he does sing.
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I hear them every morning in the Parkland at daybreak
The pee wee song of the pee wee one never could mistake
In late Winter they build their cup shaped mud nest on fork of branch of tree
The black and white birds known as magpie lark or mudlark or to many as pee wee
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In fancy the song of the dipper I hear
The river he sings in to my thoughts are near
With snow white breast and mostly dark brown
As he sing on a rock midst the rapids he bobs up and down
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Don't worry about him Kayla he is not worth your tears
Though the grief of lost love it can linger for years
Over time lost love's heartache does lessen by the day
And life does go on it does work in this way
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The familiar song of the blackbird take me to places far away
To woods by the northern mountains in April and in May
When buttercups are in full bloom by the silver tongued rill
That babbles to the river down the high field by the hill
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Do sing us a song of the silver tongued rill
That flows to the river from the old brown hill
By groves, ditches and hedgerows it babbles on it's way
On it's sea going journey by night and by day
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Though the river he sings in not anywhere near
In fancy the song of the dipper i do hear
On a rock in the rapids he sings as he bobs up and down
In the river that flows in the fields by the town
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For to save our natural environment some say 'tis too late
But the beauty of Nature we should celebrate
Smoke from factory chimneys and motorized vehicles polluting the air
And due to habitat destruction Wildlife becoming rare
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Please sing me a song of the clear mountain rill
That babbles on down from the foot of the hill
By many a ditch and many a hedgerow
To join the big river it ever does flow.
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'Tis not of love or love of song the male bird ever sing
Or any sense of happiness for to celebrate the Spring
His song born of aggression with borders to defend
In his war cry to his own kind he is not one to pretend
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The literary critics tend to ignore me and my verses they don't even rate
I'm seen as lacking in inspiration without the genius to create
What one would call something of literary value something that would live on in time
I am one of the last poetasters to dabble in old fashioned rhyme.
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Wildflowers bloomed by hedgerow near roadway
As I walked up the by road through Belcray
And sun shone brightly on a Summer's day
And songbirds piped flushed with the joys of May.
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The hill to success is quite steep and I'm not a good climber
And I don't yearn for wealth and fame I'm what you'd call a rhymer
And suppose I'll be writing rhymes until the reaper takes me
Until the god who sustains life will finally forsake me.
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A gale force wind there is no moon tonight
But in the high field I see dazzler light
It's someone lamping rabbits seems to me
Or Jimmy Cotter's ghost who knows maybe? .
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Sing us a song of Nature the birds and the bees
The sound of the freshening wind in the trees
The one the artists and writers in their works celebrate
The unrivaled beauty that she does create
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Old memories die hard as the wise one does say
The sight and song of a greenfinch carries me far away
To groves and to fields i have not seen for years
For what used to be i have shed my last tears
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The last of the colliers are ageing their better days for them long o'er
Whilst the generation of miners before them are now at rest forever more
In the cemetery off of Cameron street a short drive from Wonthaggi Town
Far from their old Homelands in Europe they rest in peace two metres down.
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I sing for the fringe dwellers and I sing for the downtrod
And I sing for all of the people who are forsaken by god
And I sing for everybody who by sorrow have been stung
And I sing for the homeless and I sing for the unsung.
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The tiny seed placed in the ground in fifty years or so
Will rise above all others and to a giant tree grow
And the seeds she sheds in Autumn germinate on the ground
And her children are the saplings that grow nearby around.
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There's never much in his account in bank safe flexi teller
But that's the way it has to be if you are a fringe dweller
And those who like to 'Pigeon hole' have yet to classify him
Not middle class or poor or rich of status they deny him.
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I know from where my life's journey began and god knows where 'tis ending
And I am just a wandering man and what's the use pretending
That I belong to any place to any State or Nation
Life can be like a mystery trip to an unknown destination.
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I'm always with the underdog though age has made me mellow
And I have been described at times as a sentimental fellow
I don't admire the Powerbrokers the big wheels of the city
My sympathies are with the poor the poor alone I pity.
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I love the sound of rhyming words like Dan will rhyme with Ann
And I could never be a poet just call me rhyming man
This modern verse too much for me it's way above my head
Though modern poets are now the rage and Rhyme is with the dead.
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When the flowers bloom on the rhododendron tree
And the parkland wear it's finest greenery
And the shrike thrush pipe his sweetest melody
Then I know you'll return again to me.
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