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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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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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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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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'The Boys of Barr Na Sraide who hunted for the wran'
A line from a song of Sigerson Clifford and when I was a young man
I heard it sung in pubs and clubs years ago and far away
But that is in my distant past in the long gone yesterday.
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Sing a song of Stephen Foster's a song from long ago
Sing 'Jeanie with the light brown hair' or even 'Old black Joe'
Or sing my 'Old Kentucky home' for that would please me so
Or 'old folks at home' or 'Oh Susanna' to the strains of the banjo.
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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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'Tis not of a wealthy person or an elite sport's person or a queen or a king
Or anyone seen as one of great importance i now wish to sing
No i will sing of the people who are burdened by care
Of the poor and the hungry in the big World out there.
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When I hear the song 'Afton Waters' it author Robert Burns comes to mind
The National bard of his Country Scotland and his equal so hard to find
His songs have lived on through the centuries in Scotland they have Burns day
One can sense the music in his poems with words the great bard had a way.
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It has been awhile now and many a Spring
Since i heard the dark brown white breasted dipper sing
On a rock around where the stream rapids did flow
That is going back two decades and that seems long ago.
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Above the bogland at the twilight of day
The curlew is piping his song of the May
His Beautiful music melodious and clear
Despite time and distance i fancy i hear.
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The song of the chaffinch i fancy i hear
He sings in an old wood to my thoughts so near
The sunshine is warming his lovely pink breast
Nearby his mate quietly sits on her eggs in her nest
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A poet if ever there was one is Christie the Queen of Song
She sings her songs on her guitar whilst others sing along
Her singing voice distinctive is so beautiful and clear
And she is one of those that you've heard once that again you want to hear.
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In the dark of the morning just before daybreak
The song of the magpie one cannot mistake
The black and white bird with the beautiful song
To Nature's great songsters he surely belong.
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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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In May Winter was only a memory and the curlew was back on the moor
And greenery had come to the hedgerows and pipits piped in Annagloor
And dipper sang out in the river and hawthorn wore blooms white as snow
And over the dappled green meadows the dark swallows winged to and fro.
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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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In these literary times of modern verse I'm seen as an old timer
And literary critics would see me as an old fashioned rhymer
A man immersed in doggerel and not worth criticizing
For they see rhyme as with the dead and their views not too surprising.
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If you feel like singing a song sing of the war afflicted
The people due to circumstance by poverty restricted
Those people we call refugees and that word dare I mention
Who seek refuge on foreign shores only to end up in detention.
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May she rest in peace Eileen O Connor she had her ups and downs in life
She was a good mum to her children and to Will O a very good wife,
She had her black crosses of sorrow but with her heart breaks she somehow did cope,
They say at the end of the tunnel there is always a bright ray of hope.
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All around the World war is raging and the mother grieves for her dead son
And what did the poor fellow die for as nothing is solved by the gun?
No bombs and guns don't solve a problem they only make the problem worse
The lust for land and power and money on us human kind is a curse.
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The old bloke in the bar room sung a song of Christy Ring
And in his strong accent how sweetly he did sing
And he talked of Munster Finals in good old Thurles Town
Where for County pride and glory men hurled for renown.
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Twilight in the evening and the merry blackbirds trill
In the high green wood of Claramore by rugged Clara hill
And here am I a lonely man and I sadly gazing down
On the darkening fields of Millstreet and the lights of Millstreet Town.
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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'm an old fashioned sort of bloke and my rhymes are out of fashion
And I lack in charm and I lack in style and I too lack in passion
But doggerelising I can't stop for me it's an addiction
Still I could be hooked on heroin 'twould be a worse affliction.
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I like so many of my years have known a better Season
But for lack of hope and zest for life this ought not be a reason
My ego deflated of late and time has made me mellow
But then suppose that's how it is with your average ageing fellow.
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I woke this morning to a brand New Year
And still all seem the same as yesterday,
The clock that hang on kitchen wall I hear
And time as ever tick and tick away.
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Amazing how a song can stir up memories
And only lately heard a ballad singer sing
A famous song written by Brian McMahon
For Ireland's greatest hurler Christy Ring.
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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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The sun doesn't shine by day and few birds in song
And the nights are dark and wet and cold and long
And like the weather the clouds of my heart gray
And Spring at least almost three months away.
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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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